 This review presents five representative remote sensing applications in agriculture, 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 land use slash land cover changes. The paper provides an overview of the main agricultural challenges and existing operational monitoring systems before describing and illustrating these applications in the context of global challenges facing the agricultural sector, such as minimizing environmental impact while increasing production and productivity. The review concludes with key recommendations. This article was authored by Clement Atzberger.