In the CORESTA 1998 Congress we presented our first paper dealing with the present and future of the application of satellite remote sensing to the tobacco crop. Since then, considerable advances have been done in the spacecraft technology for the Earth observation as well as in the data processing facilities, widening the usefulness of this methodology and its range of applications. New commercial satellites have been launched increasing the revisit frequency, and a new generation of very high spatial resolution sensors (1m and 0.61m) are already in orbit on board of IKONOS and QUICKBIRD spacecrafts. Although LANDSAT 5 and LANDSAT 7 continue being the hobbyhorses in our work, our experiences with very high spatial resolution satellites have shown their usefulness for more detailed studies in regions of special interest. The present paper describes our advances in tobacco remote sensing since the CORESTA 1998 presentation. Such advances mainly deal with the extension of the small scale first experimental studies to bigger areas, such as the whole State of Kentucky and some tobacco producing areas in South America. Likewise, efforts have been made looking for the most suitable data processing methods and indexes of the crop condition in order to standardize as far as possible the routine procedures. In the same way compromise solutions were tried out to cope with the very frequent problem of atmospheric interference. Our experience also demonstrates the convenience of a regional low-resolution satellite monitoring in order to follow the evolution of the agro-meteorological environment during the seasonal crop development. Indeed, the evaluation of parameters such as vegetation indexes at a regional level could be good indicators for the yield forecast.