MSU BILLINGS PROFESSOR BARBARA WHEELING:

“The Inevitability of Accounting in Agriculture”

November 13, 2008

The American system of agricultural lending favors collateral as the basis for loans rather than cash flows or profit. The result is a tendency to treat farm operations as real-estate, rather than as a business.

Agricultural producers have little incentive to become more business-oriented when funding for operations or capital improvements is based on land values over which they have little control. However, when land values decline, agricultural producers no longer have the asset base that can support additional loans and in some cases, cannot service the existing loans.

Agricultural producers should take it upon themselves to learn techniques, such as strategic management and accounting, to help make business decisions about their operations. At the same time, parties closely involved with agricultural producers (accountants, consultants, lenders, educators) can assist in the transition from little or no control of the financial situation of agricultural operations to strategic decision-making.

Barbara M. Wheeling received her PhD from the University of Alberta in 1999 and has an MBA with Accounting and Finance emphasis from the University of Wyoming (1989) and a Bachelor of Science in Animal Science from North Dakota State University (1972). She is a member of the Board of Directors and Technical Committee of the Farm Financial Standards Council. She is currently serving as assistant professor in accounting at the College of Business, Montana State University Billings. Previously she served on the faculties of Colorado State University-Pueblo and Southern Utah University. She is the author of “Alternatives to GAAP for the Agricultural Industry”, Today’s CPA, (November/December, 2005), “Agricultural Accounting: A Case for Asset Revaluation”, Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Economics, (Vol. 2, 2001), Introduction to Agricultural Accounting (a textbook on agricultural accounting, published in 2007), and Accounting for Agricultural Producers (a monograph published by the Bureau of National Affairs, Washington, D.C., 2007).

For more information about the MSU Billings Library Lecture Series, contact Brent Roberts, associate director of the library, at 657-1655.