A Comparison of Information Technology Usage across Supply Chains: A Comparison of the U.S. Beef Industry and the U.S. Food Industry

Historically, the growth of the beef industry has been hampered by various entities, i.e., breeders, cowcalf producers, stockers, backgrounders, processors, etc..., within the beef industry’s supply chain. The primary obstacles to growth are the large numbers of participants in the upstream side of the supply chain and the lack of coordination between them. Over the last decade significant advances have been made in information and communication technologies, and many new companies have been founded to promote these technical advances. This research looks at both the upstream and downstream participants to determine the degree to which information technologies are currently being utilized and the degree that these new technologies have driven performance improvements in the beef industry’s supply chain. Through surveys, the authors find that the beef industry does not use information technologies to their benefit and that the US beef supply chain is not yet strategically poised to enable the use of these technologies.