The Scottish Government has signed a one-year, seven-figure contract with US-listed Earth observation company Planet Labs to provide daily satellite imagery and AI-driven analytics to its Agricultural and Rural Economy Directorate, in one of the more significant civil geospatial deals awarded in Scotland this year.
The agreement, announced on 30 July 2026, will see Planet’s Berlin-based German subsidiary supply data and advanced analytics through IT services group Computacenter as reseller. Under the deal, Planet will deliver continuous PlanetScope imagery at three-metre spatial resolution across Scottish landmasses, feeding automated machine-learning analytics directly into administrative decision-making systems without manual image processing.
The contract underpins Scotland’s Agricultural Reform Route Map, which is taking the country away from legacy European Union Common Agricultural Policy mechanisms and towards a new four-tier agricultural support framework. Daily remote-sensing observations are intended to help civil planners evaluate crop health, monitor soil management, verify biodiversity initiatives and benchmark carbon-emission reduction targets across rural agricultural holdings.
Planet said its archive of AI-driven analytics data will provide the Scottish Government with insights to develop sustainable food production, increase biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions.
Jo Gray, Director of Scotland’s Agricultural Reform Program, framed the deal as an evaluation phase rather than a finished procurement.
“We are working with Planet through 2026 to explore how these capabilities may support the Scottish Government in meeting its environmental and climate targets through a more objective and continuous monitoring system,” Gray said. “This approach could help track ecological progress, provide valuable evidence to inform decision-making, and support the development of future agricultural reform initiatives.”
The contract sits within a wider expansion of Planet’s civil-government business in Europe. The company already supplies similar data-analytics support to the Welsh Government and to England’s Rural Payments Agency, meaning the Scottish deal moves Planet a step closer to a UK-wide footprint across the devolved administrations and central-government rural payments infrastructure.
For Scotland, the deal is also a marker of how satellite data and machine learning are becoming embedded in day-to-day public administration — not as pilot projects, but as procurement-grade tools linked to subsidy compliance and environmental auditing. As updated agricultural support guidelines roll out through 2027, space-based monitoring is being positioned as an objective baseline against which claims can be checked.
Successful delivery of the initial one-year contract is expected to inform longer-term procurement frameworks for satellite-enabled land management and carbon tracking across the wider United Kingdom, according to reporting on the announcement.
This is a substantive AI/geospatial contract with a Scottish public buyer, delivered via a Berlin-based subsidiary through Computacenter — a reminder that Scottish public tech spend routinely flows through European entities and UK integrators. And if the pilot converts, the addressable prize is the UK-wide, multi-devolved-administration rural-payments monitoring stack.
