Satellite insights for agriculture
Northgate Labs is developing clear, field-by-field summaries of crop conditions and possible flood impacts using open satellite observations.
The goal is to help insurers, agricultural lenders and public agencies decide where to look closer and what needs attention.
Planned coverage: cotton, wheat, rice, maize and soybean; regions chosen with pilot partners
The problem
When teams need to assess many farms, local visits and reports can take time. Satellite images may offer a wider view, but they need careful interpretation before they can help guide a decision.
After a flood or dry spell, insurers may need to inspect many farms before they can understand the scale of damage. Travel and access can delay those checks.
A satellite view can help teams decide where an in-person visit matters most.
A loan team may know the borrower but have limited information about what is happening on the land during a growing season.
Regular field-level observations could add context to portfolio reviews.
Public agencies and relief teams need to understand which areas may be affected, while field access and local reports are still catching up.
A broad satellite-based view can help teams prioritize follow-up checks.
How it works
This is the process the product is designed to follow, explained without technical steps or unverified performance claims.
We start with open satellite images from sources such as Sentinel-2 and Landsat, which record the same places repeatedly over time.
The images are free to access; processing them still takes computing resources.
Field boundary data and observations are supplied by a partner, and observations are checked for visibility before they are summarized.
Unclear observations should be treated cautiously, not as certain results.
The planned product will summarize signs of crop stress and possible flood impact for each field, together with the observation date and an indication of uncertainty.
These estimates are decision support, not a replacement for field checks.
The intended product will make summaries available through a simple dashboard and, for teams that need it, a connection to their own software.
Pilot requirements will help determine the first delivery format.
What the product is designed to provide
The aim is to turn satellite observations into a short summary: what may be happening, how much of a field could be affected, and when the image was captured.
Intended report format
This is the format we are designing with pilot partners. It shows what each report will cover; no values are shown because no pilot results have been published yet.
Reports are intended to be dated and presented with their limitations, so a team can decide whether to investigate further.
Who it may help
Different teams ask different questions. Northgate Labs gives them a common, dated starting point for those conversations.
Crop insurers
Use satellite-based information to help prioritize which reported losses need an in-person review.
A field-level summary of crop condition, possible water coverage and image date.
The information is intended to support, not replace, an adjuster’s assessment.
Agricultural lenders
Add context about crop conditions when reviewing agricultural loans and portfolios.
A dated summary of visible crop changes for the fields in a portfolio.
Teams provide the field locations they want included in an evaluation.
NGOs and public agencies
Build an early overview of areas that may need attention after a flood or dry spell.
Area-level summaries of possible water coverage and crop condition.
Use the overview to guide local checks and response planning.
These are intended use cases, not current customer deployments or validated outcomes.
AWS and the product plan
Northgate Labs is designed around AWS in three phases. Satellite images are large, analysis needs vary over the season, and this plan will grow with what the pilot proves is needed.
Will store the open satellite imagery for each pilot region. Large images need cheap and durable object storage.
Planned to notice when new satellite observations arrive and trigger the next processing step without a server running all day.
Will run the bursty image-analysis jobs. Compute scales up when observations arrive and down to zero when they do not.
Planned intake for early-access requests, so the pilot pipeline starts from data that is already structured.
Will host the development and evaluation of crop condition and flood impact models against field observations.
Planned home for field boundaries and results. Geospatial queries such as "fields inside this district" fit a spatial database.
Will coordinate the multi-step processing workflow and retry tasks that fail partway.
Will serve the report interface without managing individual servers.
Planned front door for partner systems that request reports programmatically.
Planned for monitoring service health and job outcomes.
Planned for keeping access credentials out of code and configuration.
Scope and timing will be tuned with pilot partners.
Roadmap
This is a direction, not a dated delivery commitment. The first priority is to agree on a useful pilot and check the estimates against real field observations.
Global · major field crops
Work with pilot partners to compare satellite-based summaries with what is observed on the ground.
Based on pilot findings
Expand only after the first evaluations show where the product is useful.
Longer-term goal
Make it easier for organizations to review information and use it in their existing work.
The stages and features shown are proposed priorities; timing and final scope depend on partner feedback and pilot findings.
Early access
We are inviting organizations to join the pilot group. Tell us where you work and what you need to decide; we will follow up to discuss whether an evaluation is a fit.
Share your use case and region so we can assess whether an early evaluation is a fit.
Help define which fields, observations and comparisons would make an evaluation useful.
Discuss product needs and practical constraints with the team building Northgate Labs.
Crops, regions, outputs and pricing are decided with the pilot group before they are decided for everyone.
FAQ
Straight answers, including the ones where the answer is not final yet.
Open satellite observations from Sentinel-2 and Landsat, plus other open datasets that are relevant to a region. All planned sources are publicly available; image clarity and availability vary by location and date.