MODERN FARMING

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 236, 18 September 1936, Page 11

MODERN FARMING

Cost-Accounting a Great Help

USEFUL GUIDE From the accountancy viewpoint many farmers in New Zealand as well as in older countries, stick to the old practice of “muddling through”, but some are learning from experience that it pays to keep proper records of operations and transactios. These progressive men recognise the value of systematic cost-accounting.

An expert address on this subject was given recently by Mr James Wyllie at a meeting of farmers in England. “Cost-accounting is not a fad,” lie said. “Some of the shrewdest farmers in the country will say that they rely on accounting for a check ou their methods of management, and while figures can never take the place of acumen and sound judgment, they can give a useful guide to the directions in which production can best be developed on a particular farm and where there aer weak spots in the management.

“It has often been said that a fanner who knows his job does not need to waste time on figures and that the man who keeps the most careful accounts is the worst farmer in the district. This is not true to-day. Farming is a business w’hich does not in present circumstances allow any margin for haphazard ideas. If cost-accounting can help to make the management more efficient few can afford to scorn this farmer can carry accounting a stage farther than the presentation of a balance sheet to satisfy the inspector of taxes, of a bank manager reluctant to continue an overdraft.”

At present a few farmers are keeping their own cost-accounts, but in the main they are being kept iu co-opera-tion with one of the advisory centres, mostly on a small scale. In Mr Wyllic’s view, it is work which should bo done on a co-operative basis by tanners themselves, that is, a group of farmers might engage a qualified cost-ac countant, with the necessary farming knowledge, to work up the cost records kept ou the farms, and ultimately prepare a complete set of cost accounts. It may be that the long-experienced farmer can manage not so badly bytrusting his business acumen and judgment (comments a reviewer), but farmers must be young and inexperi eneed before they are old, and to the oung farmer cost-accounting is worth nany years or experience. It is no exaggeration to say that it enables him to learn more in 10 years than he would otherwise do in 20 or 30, and,what is more, leurn it cheaply.