Farmers can now call on the latest satellite information using the unique TalkingFields service to get the best from their land while cutting the environmental cost.

Globally available satellite data are fine-tuned to the needs of individual farmers by the Vista company in Germany, who combine optical satellite images with information from ground sensors, satnav and sophisticated crop growth models to enable precision farming on a local scale.

"Agriculture is becoming a data-driven business," explains Heike Bach, CEO at Vista.

Vista is one of 50 expert users evaluating data from the Sentinel-2A Earth observation satellite launched in June 2015 as part of the EU's Copernicus programme. "The data are excellent," she notes.