VESTRA was contracted by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) to develop the BeefTracker utilizing Esri’s ArcGIS Online web mapping platform as the core foundation for development. The objective of the BeefTracker was to design, develop, and implement a location-based solution for ranchers to document sustainable land practices and to demonstrate that beef production fits within a sustainable ecosystem. The BeefTracker utilizes the latest web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, and was designed to provide a robust, but easy to use interface for data collection, editing, and reporting.
The initial design and testing of the BeefTracker was based upon input from NCBA’s project team and a select group of volunteer rangeland researchers and ranchers in various parts of the U.S. The input from the project team and volunteers provided great insight into current livestock operation activities, and how the information entered into the application could be used to demonstrate, and to improve operations over time. Keeping this initial design group small allowed VESTRA’s development team to focus on building core functionality that demonstrated how ranchers could utilize and benefit from GIS technology.