Smart Tech
Eyes in the Sky: EarthDaily’s Dave Gebhardt on the Future of Satellite Data in Agriculture
Dave Gebhardt (right), General Manager at EarthDaily, joined CropLife Editor Eric Sfiligoj for a Fireside Chat at the 2025 Tech Hub LIVE in Des Moines, IA.
At the 2025 Tech Hub LIVE in Des Moines, IA, CropLife sat down for a Fireside Chat with Dave Gebhardt, General Manager of EarthDaily Agro, to discuss how satellite imagery is transforming agriculture. With over 15 years of experience in ag tech, Gebhardt offered a grounded and forward-looking perspective on how data from space can drive better decisions here on Earth.
Formerly known as EarthDaily Analytics, the company recently underwent a rebrand — now simply EarthDaily — with a renewed focus on delivering high-quality, consistent satellite imagery across five industries, including agriculture. “We’ve recently dropped the ‘Analytics’ part of our name,” Gebhardt said. “We have a new logo and brand. We’re a satellite-driven data and analytics company.”
EarthDaily is positioning itself to bring clarity and precision to a notoriously complex problem: how to monitor crops accurately, efficiently, and at scale. With its global footprint and headquarters split between Minneapolis, Vancouver, and New York, the company has been working on its satellite constellation for nearly a decade. In June 2025, it hit a major milestone — launching its first satellite.
“The mission has stayed the same over the last decade,” said Gebhardt. “What’s changed is the industry’s ability to consume the data. Satellite imagery has traditionally been big, complex, and cumbersome to work with.”
That bottleneck — the difficulty of turning raw satellite data into actionable insights — has long limited adoption in ag. But EarthDaily is aiming to change that by making satellite-powered insights easy to use and integrate.
“One of our main goals is to create low-touch, no-touch analytics, particularly for ag retail,” said Gebhardt. “We’ve shifted from ‘maps to math.’ It’s about crop monitoring, change detection, and tracking crop health and phenology.”
With daily revisit capabilities, five-meter resolution (considered optimal for agriculture), and improved air quality sensing, EarthDaily’s upcoming constellation is designed to deliver more precise, timely, and relevant data. And as artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in agronomic tools, the pressure to provide high-quality input data is greater than ever.
“Everything’s AI,” Gebhardt noted. “But satellite imagery — if you’ve worked with it in the past — it’s big, it’s large, and it can be cumbersome. Quite frankly, the analytics we put out probably just didn’t tip the scale in terms of being valuable enough for people to write a big check for it.”
To support the next generation of agtech tools, EarthDaily is building what Gebhardt calls “AI-ready” data. This means consistency over time, precision in location, and the kind of global coverage needed for scalable applications.
“We’re launching 10 identical satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit. They’ll cover the Earth’s landmass every day,” he said. “If I get a pixel from right here today, I’ll get one from that exact same spot tomorrow. That’s not the way it’s been in the past.”
Consistency is particularly important for AI model development. “If you’re a data scientist building a model today, you want to know your data source will be there tomorrow — and five years from now,” Gebhardt emphasized. With satellites designed to last 10 to 15 years, EarthDaily is planning for long-term reliability.
Looking ahead to 2026, Gebhardt hopes to see broader adoption of satellite-powered insights — not just for “cool space stuff,” but for tangible, everyday decisions in the field. “The real value is in helping businesses make better decisions and achieve better outcomes — from the farmer to the agronomist to ag retailers and input providers,” he said.
EarthDaily is already piloting productized solutions aimed at practical use cases. One example: predicting tasseling in corn to help time fungicide applications. “Nothing frustrates a farmer more than spraying too late,” Gebhardt pointed out. “These are the types of insights that don’t just help you sell something — they deliver operational excellence.”
Still, he acknowledged that pricing could be a hurdle. “Satellite people tend to think in defense and intelligence pricing. I think in ag pricing,” he said. “We’re working through that balance.”
Despite the challenges, Gebhardt remains optimistic. “We have a team that deeply understands ag — they’re right here with me — and we’re committed to making this work for the industry. That’s where it all started.”
As the agriculture sector continues to push toward smarter, data-driven decisions, companies like EarthDaily are ensuring the sky is not the limit — but the starting point.
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