Beauce Cereal Plains — Live Satellite Health Report

About this region

The Beauce is the granary of France — a vast, flat, fertile plateau southwest of Paris where wheat, barley, and corn stretch to the horizon across some of the country’s largest farms. The deep loam soils over limestone bedrock hold moisture well and support high yields, making this one of Europe’s most productive cereal regions. The landscape is open and homogeneous, which makes satellite monitoring unusually clean: uniform fields, minimal terrain shadow, and consistent crop types across large areas.

Climate & growing cycle

The climate is temperate oceanic with reliable summer rainfall. Winter wheat is sown in October, tillers through winter, and harvests in July–August. Corn (maize) follows a spring planting cycle with harvest in September–October. The annual cycle is dramatic: bare soil after ploughing, rapid green-up through spring, a dense canopy at heading, and a near-instant collapse at harvest — the classic bell-curve signature of an annual row crop, visible from space with unmistakable clarity.

Satellite monitoring insights

NDVI on the Beauce follows the most dramatic seasonal curve in European agriculture: near zero after autumn ploughing, climbing steeply through spring canopy development, peaking above 0.8 at heading, then collapsing at harvest. NDMI tracks water stress during grain fill — the critical yield-determining period in June. EVI is valuable here for differentiating high-biomass areas that saturate NDVI. Because the Beauce is so flat and uniform, spatial variation in any index is a reliable signal of a soil or management difference worth investigating.

Key metrics

Index	Peak range	Seasonal pattern
NDVI	0.8+ at heading	Bare soil → peak → harvest crash
NDMI	0.0–0.3	Holds through grain fill, drops at senescence
EVI	0.4–0.6	Less saturation at peak biomass than NDVI

Free report: Get a live satellite health analysis of the Beauce cereal plains this month — see the canopy curve, water stress, and how this year compares to history for free, no signup. Check the fields →