A CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING FOR INDIVIDUAL FARMS; Proceedings of the 4th Minnesota Padova Conference on Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, September 4-10, 1994, Wayzata, MN

The objective of this paper is to provide a framework of accounting to allow the evaluation and comparison of both conventional and traditional agriculture by accounting for both traditional market transactions and the environmental resources and changes in those resources. Even if a study estimates the value of the change in the resource inventory, the correction to the farmer's financial condition is not made in an explicit way. Again, the study by Faeth et al. makes a strong contribution to the need to have such an accounting system for farms. Farmers should be interested in this information because it is their own backyard where they are working, living and using their own assets. We start with a brief review of the work done with national accounts and then move to accounting on individual farms.