REGULACJE RACHUNKOWOŚCI I AUDYTINGU – PROJEKTY, ZMIANY, OPINIE
ACCOUNTING AND AUDITING REGULATIONS – PROJECTS, CHANGES, REVIEWS

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to present the most important issues related to the functioning of agricultural accounting in Poland in the context of the National Accounting Standard project (NAS) Agricultural Activity and IAS 41 Agriculture. The biological character of agricultural production makes it impossible to correctly reflect the impact of economic events connected with agricultural activity (biological transformation) by using the traditional accounting model based on the historical cost principle and matching principle. This presumption was adopted during the IAS 41 development process. Agricultural economists had waited for this document with great expectations and, at the same time, with great concern. IAS 41 recognized evaluation methods and methods of obtaining calculations of outturn categories previously used in economics and farming. This, in particular, relates to profit or loss made where the compound of biological assets is initially included in fair value (farm-gate). Thus obtained result is profit/loss not on the sale, but on production. That is the correct approach, since production categories are basic agricultural categories for the evaluation of rationality of agricultural activity. Unfortunately, the Agricultural Activity project in Poland ignores this fact and tends to depart from fair value in the evaluation process. It introduces subjective methods of calculating costs of agricultural production, which infringes the “balance between benefit and cost principle” as well as its usefulness (substance over form principle). Therefore, in view of all this, one may question the sense of developing NAS Agricultural Activity.

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