Your field from space, thanks to Copernicus
Every satellite image in FairGrow comes from Sentinel-2, the European Copernicus programme. We process it inside the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem and put the result next to the sensor in your soil. Ten metres per pixel, a new look every few days, in your own language.
The programme behind the picture
We did not launch a satellite. Europe did, twice, and then decided that everyone may use what it sees. FairGrow is one of the many things that became possible because of that decision.
Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation programme
Copernicus is run by the European Commission with the European Space Agency and the EU member states. Its Sentinel satellites photograph the whole planet, and the data policy is short: full, free and open. Sentinel-2 is the pair that matters for growers. Two identical satellites, thirteen spectral bands, ten metres per pixel for the bands that show plants, and a return over the same field every five days.
Since 2023 that data has been served through the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, a European cloud where you can not only download the images but also process them where they sit. That is exactly what we do: our formulas run there, on the day’s scene, and only the finished picture travels to our servers. We never store raw satellite products, and we never take a byte more than the parcel you drew needs.
Two more Copernicus sources sit beside Sentinel-2 in your dashboard: the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service for the crop history of your parcel since 2017, and the Copernicus DEM, the 30-metre elevation model behind the relief layers.
Attribution: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026. Shown on every tile, chart, download and report that uses it.
What happens between the satellite and you
Six steps, none of which ask anything of you. Draw your parcel once, and every usable pass after that turns into a fresh set of pictures on its own.
Seventeen ways to look at one parcel
Sentinel-2 records thirteen colours, most of them invisible to the eye. Each layer is one question asked of those colours, in words a grower uses. You pick the tab; the maths stays out of sight.
True colour
How your parcel looks from space. For orientation and for spotting what changed.
False colour
Near-infrared painted red. The deeper the red, the denser the living crop.
NDVI, vegetation
The classic vigour index. Dark green is full canopy, brown is bare soil or stress.
NDMI, moisture
Water in leaf and soil. Blue is moist, orange is dry, days before the plant shows it.
NDWI, water
Open water and waterlogged corners. Ponds, ditches and the spot that never drains.
EVI, growth
An improved NDVI for dense crops, where the classic index stops seeing differences.
NDDI, drought
Vegetation and water taken together. Red is where drought is biting first.
SWIR, burn and moisture
Short-wave infrared. Shows freshly ploughed ground, drought stress and fire damage.
SAVI, young crops
Vegetation corrected for visible soil. Reliable when the crop is still small.
NDRE, red edge
Chlorophyll in a mature crop. Stays sensitive where NDVI saturates, so it doubles as a nitrogen check.
Scene classification
What the satellite itself thinks each pixel is: plant, soil, water, cloud or shadow. Our cloud filter uses it.
Crop map, CLMS
The crop the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service saw on your parcel, per year, since 2017.
Hillshade
The terrain lit from the north-west. Mounds, gullies and old ditches jump out.
Slope
Steepness in degrees. Steep corners dry out first and wash out first.
Sun aspect
Which way a slope faces. South catches the warmth, north keeps the frost.
Elevation
The low spots where cold air pools on a clear night, and the high spots that stay dry.
Wetness
Where water flows and collects when it rains, computed from the shape of the land.
Five of the indices also run as a 90-day trend for your parcel, and a click on any pixel shows its values for that day.
Where the satellite meets the soil
A satellite sees the whole parcel once every few days. A sensor sees one point every few minutes. Neither is enough alone, and the interesting part of FairGrow is what happens when they meet.
NDRE against the model
Our nitrogen balance is a model fed by crop, soil and weather. NDRE from Sentinel-2 is an independent reading of chlorophyll in the canopy. When both agree you can trust the advice; when they part ways, that parcel deserves a walk.
Stress from above, timing from below
NDMI and the NDVI trend show where the parcel is under moisture stress. The soil sensor shows when the root zone actually dries. Together they turn a weekly image into a daily decision, and the irrigation drawer puts both on one screen.
A past on day one
Most small growers have no digital crop history. The Copernicus land monitoring collections give every parcel one on the day you draw it: what grew here since 2017, when it emerged and when it was harvested.
Where Sentinel-2 shows up
Six places, none of which expect you to know what a spectral band is.
Satellite view
Six tiles on your dashboard for the latest clear pass, with the date and cloud cover. Expand it for all seventeen layers, older scenes, a 90-day trend and a download of any layer as a picture.
Location context
NDVISentinel-2Normalised Difference Vegetation IndexCompares the near-infrared light that healthy leaves reflect with the red light they absorb. Runs from -1 to 1: above 0.6 is a full, healthy canopy, around 0.2 is bare soil or a crop under stress. Computed from Sentinel-2 bands B08 and B04. blended onto the aerial photo and clipped to your parcel outline, with the soil profile, the water balance and the crop history around it.
Irrigation
The NDVI series of your parcel next to the moisture your sensor measures, in the same drawer where you set the rules for your valve or pump.
Nitrogen balance
The modelled nitrogen status is checked against NDRESentinel-2Normalised Difference Red Edge indexUses the red-edge band, the narrow step between red and near-infrared where chlorophyll leaves its mark. Where NDVI saturates in a dense, mature crop, NDRE still separates well-fed leaves from hungry ones, which is why it works as an independent nitrogen check. Sentinel-2 bands B08 and B05. over the last twenty days, an independent test that costs you nothing.
Relief and drainage
Slope, aspect and wetness from the Copernicus DEMCopernicusDigital Elevation ModelA height map of the whole planet, 30 metres per cell, built from the TanDEM-X radar satellites and published by Copernicus. FairGrow computes the relief layers from it: shade, slope, sun aspect, low spots and where water collects. explain why one corner always dries out first or floods first.
Reports
The weekly report, the weather report and the drone survey report each carry the latest image of your parcel, with the attribution under it.
Asking politely, storing carefully
Open data stays open when the people using it are considerate. This is what we do so that a growing number of growers never becomes a burden on a European public service.
The clearest pass, then a mask
For pictures we pick the least cloudy scene of the past 90 days. For numbers we also mask every pixel the satellite flags as cloud or shadow. Pictures stay clean and averages stay honest.
We keep what we receive
Pictures are kept for 30 days, parcel numbers for six hours. Two growers on the same spot share one request, and a warm cache serves most dashboards without touching the Data Space at all.
Only your parcel
Parcels of three hectares or more get statistics for their own outline. Smaller plots use a one-kilometre square, because a single Sentinel-2 pixel already covers a good part of a garden.
No raw data, ever
We never download satellite products. Our formulas run inside the Copernicus cloud and only the finished picture or the parcel average comes back. Our data footprint is a PNG and a few lines of JSON.
Honest when something is off
If the Data Space is unreachable you keep the last image we received, and the date under it says how old it is. A gap is shown as a gap, never as a healthy green field.
Your data stays home
Your parcel, your sensors and your readings live on our our own servers in a Dutch data centre, ISO 27001 certified. The only thing that travels to the Copernicus cloud is the outline of the area to compute, and that cloud is European too.
A data company that went outside
FairGrow is made by EasyData, a Dutch company that has been capturing and processing documents for local authorities, healthcare and businesses since 1999, with a development team in Yerevan since 2012. FairGrow began as an experiment with garden sensors and became a platform the moment we saw how much a satellite adds when it sits next to a sensor on the same parcel.
- Built in one year on Copernicus and the Data Space, without subsidies
- For market gardeners, fruit growers, greenhouses, estates and serious home growers
- In 57 languages, because a satellite image is only useful when the explanation is in yours
The licence, in one sentence
Copernicus data is free to use, including commercially, on one condition: say where it came from. We think that is a fair deal, so the sentence is not hidden in a footer. It stands under every tile and chart, it is drawn into every picture you download, and it is printed in every report.
The Copernicus DEM and the land monitoring collections come with the same open licence and the same duty. Sentinel-2 is delivered to us through the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem under its terms and conditions; the general policy is described in the Sentinel data legal notice.
Sentinel-2 is one of several sources in your dashboard. Weather and history come from Open-Meteo and the Copernicus climate and atmosphere services, pollen from SILAM, parcel outlines from the European farm registers and crop codes from EPPO. Seasonal normals and an independent weather check come from NASA POWER, and the soil baseline from SoilGrids by ISRIC. What is next: a satellite pixel window for every sensor point, and alerts that fire when a stress pattern in the image is confirmed by the sensor underneath it.
See your own parcel from space
Create your account, add your location and draw your parcel once. The next clear pass of Sentinel-2 appears on your dashboard on its own, with the explanation in your language.
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