Abstract: Crop yield is an important economic information for a country or region, related to national and regional food security, which is of great significance to the layout of agricultural planning, policy adjustment and sustainable development. The remote sensing estimation of crop mainly includes crop identification and evaluation. This paper summarizes the research status of crop remote sensing identification and yield estimation, according to their different characteristics and targets summarizes existing crops by two categories. Based on the difference between data source and evaluation model principle, this paper summarizes existing crop yield estimation methods into four categories, summarizes methods, principles and application points to discussing and analyzing the advantages of various methods, presents the problem which still need to improve. Finally, this paper forecasts the research trend in this field.