How Remote Sensing Can Make Fertiliser Use Smarter, Cheaper and Greener

Abstract

Agriculture is evolving its nutrient management systems with the help of remote sensing; nutrient monitoring is now enabling farmers to detect crop stress and soil variability before it becomes apparent to the naked eye in the field. Today, using satellite imagery, drones, ground sensors, GIS, and artificial intelligence helps determine when and where nutrients are missing and how the crop is reacting. This article explains how precision nutrient management can increase fertiliser efficiency, lower input costs, enable zinc and micronutrient biofortification, and minimise environmental losses, including nutrient runoff and greenhouse gas emissions. It also emphasises the need for digital soil mapping, variable-rate fertiliser, and farmer-friendly advisory systems to make these technologies relevant to small and marginal farmers. Costs, technical skills, and model accuracy across all locations remain significant issues, but remote sensing-based nutrient management offers a viable pathway to advancing climate-smart, resource-efficient, and nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Its true value will depend on smallholder farming systems being able to access it at low cost, on extension support being available, on everyone being digitally literate, and on recommendations being localised and simplifying complex information into simple field-level decisions.