Agricultural remote sensing is an important branch of remote sensing science. This paper reviews the development course of agricultural remote sensing research and puts forward that both the application breadth and depth of remote sensing technique in the field of agriculture are continuously expanding. Agricultural remote sensing is going deep from monitoring single factor of production, area and yield etc. into acquiring more agricultural elements, and is expanding from traditional resources, environment fields to plant protection and other agricultural directions. Agricultural remote sensing is gradually becoming the key technology of agricultural science. This paper summarizes some important achievements of agricultural remote sensing research in China in recent years in the fields of agricultural condition remote sensing, agricultural disaster remote sensing and agricultural resources and environment remote sensing etc. The author presents some international frontier studies in agricultural remote sensing, including agricultural quantitative remote sensing, UAV remote sensing and crop phenotype remote sensing and so on. At last, the author forecasts some development prospects of domestic agricultural remote sensing technology, such as agricultural big data acquisition using the integrated space-terrestrial information network, information intelligent extraction and mining using artificial intelligence and big data and so on in “13th Five-Year Plan” and the next 10 years based on the development of sensor, networking, internet+, big data, artificial intelligence and demand of modern agricultural development.