Abstract: Soil moisture is one of the crucial elements affecting agricultural production. To monitor the surface soil moisture of the cropland is of great significance for agricultural production. Currently, the methods applied to monitor the soil moisture include the traditional physical measurement based on the sites, the simulation techniques by physical models and mathematical methods, and the remote sensing technology. The deficiencies induced by the first two methods mainly are the limited samples and the complicated parameters. Now these have been overcome with the development of remote sensing. On the basis of the differences among spectral bands and methods for remote sensing, this paper introduces the progress of remote sensing techniques about visible-near infrared, thermal infrared, microwave and their corresponding methodology, summarizes the advantages, disadvantages and applicability for different methods and also give the outlook about the retrieval of surface soil moisture of cropland by the remote sensing technology. Strengthen the study of improved model method and enhance the use of active and passive microwave data to reduce the in fluence of vegetation on soil moisture. It is also the trend of remote sensing monitoring the soil moisture over agricultural area in the future.