A Rancher’s View: The biggest pitfalls of collecting data at the ranch-level

This article was written by Stephanie Teskey , a sixth-generation rancher and Account Manager Liaison at AgriWebb.

Sustainability has always been a topic of discussion amongst ranchers. Our businesses have depended on taking care of the land that takes care of us. We’re also skeptics by nature, and if asked about time as a resource, we’ll share there simply isn’t enough.

With the introduction of new livestock sustainability programs aimed at engaging ranchers, it's important to consider this mindset for these initiatives to succeed.

The good news is, both the ranching industry, and the technology being developed to streamline record keeping and operation management, are evolving together. This is good for both the improvement of rancher resilience and the future of mutually-beneficial sustainability programs.

As a rancher, it’s also why I think it’s important to highlight major pitfalls of data collection on the ranch.

Growing up on my family’s Arizona cattle ranch, I knew record keeping was one of the most important jobs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my favorite job.

For those who didn’t grow up on a cattle ranch, it’s important to understand a little history about ranch record keeping. While the types of records have varied throughout the years, one form of record keeping has had a formidable chokehold on our industry: pen and paper.

While the types of records have varied throughout the years, one form of record keeping has had a formidable chokehold on our industry: pen and paper.

For a century and a half, my family, too, relied on the handy dandy notebook that sat in my grandpa’s front pocket. While those pages with perfect cursive writing, each filled with cow records and gate combinations, still make me feel a bit nostalgic, they served little utility to the ranch.

When the responsibility of managing my family’s ranch was passed on to my father and I, our first goal was to keep better records. But before we got better, we had to understand what historical decisions were made.

The handover process began with Grandpa showing us his calving books, one for each year. Although he had years of historical records, they were hard to decipher due to water damage, ripped pages, and worst of all, notebooks that were missing in action. That’s right, years of data missing, and years of data we couldn’t do a thing with.

That’s right, years of data missing, and years of data we couldn’t do a thing with.

Realizing that pen and paper wouldn’t cut it, we turned to Excel. Unfortunately, that too wasn’t our answer. While we took pride in our progress, taking notes and re-entering them into our Excel sheets was tedious. Errors were made, updates weren’t saved, and worst of all, the paper I used to keep chute-side records would periodically vanish during my trip back to the house.

We were still in a mess of records that spanned notebooks, text messages, and the Notes app on our phones.

My family’s story is one shared by many ranchers today. So why have ranchers stayed in the “Stone Age” when it comes to record keeping, even if it makes their job harder? Access, education, and the most expensive sentence in agriculture, “We have always done it that way.”

Access, education, and the most expensive sentence in agriculture, “We have always done it that way.”

This mindset is also proving to be a significant hurdle for the scalability of current and future sustainability programs in the cattle industry. This raises the question...

Why is the method of ranch-level data collection crucial for a sustainability program’s scalability?

AgriWebb’s Chief Product Officer Phil Chan recently wrote an article about understanding how farm-level data is used within sustainability programs, and more importantly, how digitized data is critical for program scalability and rigor.

The good news? A lot of the required data points are being collected by ranchers today. The bad news?

Like my family’s experience, few ranchers possess this data in a succinct, digitized format.

This has created unclearable hurdles for pilot programs to overcome, keeping them from turning into full-blown sustainability programs. Here are some reasons why:

Inaccurate historical data leads to baselines that aren’t rigorous.

No two ranches operate the same, each one possessing its own way of keeping track of the business. This lack of data uniformity, both in what’s being collected and in how it’s collected, poses a challenge for sustainability programs right from the start.

Specifically in the baselining phase, data gaps and differing data storage formats - notebooks, excel, and software - create a huge hindrance for both the producer and the technical advisors.

As mentioned in the next section, sustainability programs also must collate historical data into a standardized format that the Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) provider uses to calculate the baseline. For those unfamiliar, MRV is a framework for monitoring and verifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and reduction efforts, often to ensure compliance with regulations or voluntary initiatives.

If participating ranchers use different formats of record keeping, data doesn’t solely need to be tracked down, it also must be tailored to fit into the MRV platform’s required formatting. This leads to hours of work for program participants and uncovers missing historical data points.

While missing historical data isn’t ideal, benchmark values from national databases such as the USDA Commodity Database can be substituted in some places.

Original methods of compiling on-ranch data were cumbersome and not scalable

In the past, a handful of corporate sustainability projects directly engaged ranchers. Although multiple projects were launched by the world’s largest agribusiness corporations, none successfully scaled.

A major reason for this was how data was collected and compiled. The use of spreadsheets and surveys as on-ranch data compilation tools was a common practice. It was cumbersome for participating ranchers. As a rancher myself, I, too, won’t continue with something if I don’t see a return on my investment of time and resources. If sustainability programs want to scale, it’s crucial that a rancher’s initial and continual experience is positive and efficient. If not, a program won’t succeed.

If sustainability programs want to scale, it’s crucial that a rancher’s initial and continual experience is positive and efficient. If not, a program won’t succeed.

What records are ranchers keeping and why is digitizing them a solution to evolving pilots into scalable climate programs?

Ranchers have always been, and will continue to be, committed to sustainability—not just sustainability of the land, but also of our legacies. What we haven’t done historically is quantify that in our records.

As mentioned above, the data needed for new sustainability programs aligns with what a lot of ranchers are already recording.

On my family’s ranch, key records we collect include:

• Individual animal records and IDs
• Pasture use and rotation
• Inventories on feed and treatments

While these may sound like simple records, each unlocks valuable insights that enable us to make better management decisions moving forward.

Understanding each animal individually helps me to identify which cows are performing the best, and more importantly, which ones are NOT. For our operation, high performers are those that can maintain body condition during times of drought and can consistently raise and wean a calf that performs well come sale time. Our high desert environment in Arizona limits how many animals we can stock, so our mindset is, 'No freeloaders here!'

It’s also important for me to understand the performance of each pasture. This helps me to be strategic in times of drought and prioritize pasture improvement projects like addressing woody encroachment, which affects both grass production and pronghorn habitat.

Lastly, tracking our feed inventories gives me a clear view of which supplement programs are truly benefiting the cattle and how much those inputs are costing. By capturing all these records together, I can quickly see what worked, what didn’t, and uncover the 'why' faster, allowing me to make improvements.

Conclusion

The future of ranching and sustainability is intertwined with how we adapt to – and adopt – more efficient data management. While ranchers have always been dedicated to preserving the land and their legacy, modern challenges demand modern solutions. Digitizing records allows us to turn our everyday practices into actionable insights, helping us make smarter decisions and contribute meaningfully to sustainability initiatives.

By embracing technology, we can move beyond outdated methods, streamline operations, and ensure that the sustainability programs of today become the scalable solutions of tomorrow. This shift is not just about keeping better records—it's about securing the future of ranching and ensuring our commitment to both the land and the industry remains strong for generations to come.