Agriculture is one of the most important and popular fields of remote sensing applications. The purpose of this paper is to review the advances of research and application in remote sensing for agriculture in the world. The review includes following six main aspects: cropland radiative transfer mechanism and remote sensing inversion of crop parameters, remote sensing classification and identification of crops, cropland nutrient and variable fertilization techniques, crop yield and quality perdition, agricultural disaster monitoring and forecasting, and spatial decision making support system for agricultural remote sensing monitoring. Finally, the key directions needed more attention and technical breakthrough are figured out according to the current status and trends of agricultural remote sensing techniques.