Are these images from Planet Labs? Are the images publicly available?

Question

While the narrator is very enthusiastic, I can't quite figure out if these are images from Planet Labs' Dove satellites, and if the general public can also access this data.

In the NPR news article Have You Herd? Farmer Writes A Memoo Using Cows And Satellite Imagery the following YouTube video is linked. Lower your volume slightly before playing:

I thought that most of their data was still somewhat closed to the general public as part of their business model. Is this Planet Labs data and is it publicly accessible?

Also, does the Dove data stream include infrared images? the contrast in the drone visible light image is low, but in the Satellite image the cows are in a very bright area next surrounded by a very dark area.

Note, the images in question are near the end, and blurry.

Answer 1

It could be from the Doves. It looks about 3 m resolution.

Planet Labs' data is publicly (commercially!) accessible - they have launched dozens of satellites so far, they wouldn't be doing that if someone wasn't paying for images.

All of Planet's satellites observe in red, green, blue and near-IR bands. Rapideye and Skysat additionally have red edge and panchromatic respectively.

The narrator mentioned a company called FarmersEdge who seem to be into precision agriculture (which in this context means turning satellite data into actionable information for farmers). They have a picture of a Dove on their website, though I don't see if they actually state that they only use Planet Labs images.

No idea if the narrator paid for the image, or got a free trial, or (given that he's "kind of a farmer celebrity" and all of these companies have marketing budgets) was given it for free for PR.