 This review highlights five main remote-sensing applications in agriculture that contribute to minimizing environmental impact, while increasing production and productivity, including biomass and yield estimation, vegetation vigor and drought stress monitoring, assessment of crop phenological development, crop acreage estimation and crop land mapping, and mapping of disturbances and LULC changes. The paper also provides an overview of existing operational monitoring systems and concludes with key recommendations. This article was authored by Clement Atzberger.