Future making through farm management accounting: the Australian Blue Book and other attempts to standardise best practice.

Transcription

1 Future making through farm management accounting: the Australian Blue Book and other attempts to standardise best practice. Professor Lisa Jack AARES 56th Annual Conference Fremantle 7-10th February 2012 l

2 Project began as a follow up to my thesis The persistence of post-war accounting practices in UK agriculture CIMA sponsored project in UK, US, Australia and NZ enabled a side-project of finding out more detail about what was happening in the other countries in the same time Specifically, why did gross margin accounting get established in Australia, but not NZ or US particularly?

3 The publication of 'Accounting and Planning for Farm Management' (aka 'The Blue Book') in 1966 The National Workshop on Standardisation for Terminology and Procedures in Farm Management Accounting in 1967 The establishment of the Australian Committee for the Coding of Rural Accounts (ACCRA) in 1967 Publication of the code in 1970

4 Feasible idea that did not work out in practice, despite resources behind it The involvement of practising accountants in both projects, alongside agricultural economists and farm management extensionists (an example of 'knowledge transfer' and 'impact'?). The idea of designing management accounting systems rather than letting them evolve The idea of accounting being a means of 'future making' and 'future taking'

5 CA Mallyon 1961 'The principles and practices of farm management accounting' second edition theory of gross margin analysis and other European/US practices On AAES committee E Burns QDPI comparative analysis (UQld) 1965 paper Queensland Joint Committee on the Standardisation of Farm Management Practice AAES Employment of UK advisers in QDPI and elsewhere Farm business clubs WA in particular UNE, other States also developing farm management practices

6 Druce, 1965 before 1965 'was characterised by the lack of any specific institutional framework for farm management research and teaching' Shoobridge, 'At present, farm management accounting is almost non-existent as a feature of the country accountant's work'. Neilson, 'The subject is still relatively new in Australia. Overseas countries such as U.S.A. and New Zealand have for many years used more sophisticated forms of accounting for farmers than we have been accustomed to in this country'

7 Committee formed in 1967 consisted of accountants, academics, economists, consultants, and state and Commonwealth government. Terms of reference: 1. To develop a system of coding farm accounts sufficiently comprehensive to be acceptable generally to the accounting profession. 2. To develop of detailed glossary of all terms required for farm management accounting. 3. To establish liaison with all other interested bodies... (ACCRA, 1970, p.4)

8 Post 1970 QDPI turned the ACCRA code into programming for mainframe computers BSES adapted code for use in Sugar industry and piloted with 40 farmers. Manual produced but project did not extend beyond the pilot phase. Central Tablelands Management Game produced 3 rd Edition of Mallyon (Neilson, 1986) based on Blue Book/ACCRA frameworks Comparative analysis/enterprise analysis is still used and abused

9 Temporality - IT is ahead of developments advent of PCs - Funding is finite - Needs consistent input from 'champions' - transfer to external agents Malleability - commercial firms perceive advantage in bespoke systems and software, and charts of accounts - other systems of farm management accounting available (UNE, UWA) - principles and headings rather than uniformity of practice - management accounting generally has moved away from analysis based on financial statements

10 'For far too long, Australian farmers have been flying blind, relying on hopelessly inadequate financial information, basing decisions on not much more than intuition or tradition... 'Under these circumstances, it is remarkable that Australian agriculture remained reasonably efficient (Neilson, 1986, p.268)

11 Future making = 'pre-figuring, shaping and for-closing the future presents of successors' Is the future perceived as fate, fortune or fiction? In truth, the 'present future' is crowded with the intended and unintended consequences of our own and predecessors dreams and desires

12 'There is nothing so intricate as the keeping of farm accounts' (Bell, 1936) THANK YOU