IV

In the countries of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe especially, agricultural organizations began discussing and then imitating the accounting office of the SBV. Since 1911, drawing on the Swiss experience, the Finnish Confederation of Agricultural Associations began collecting farm accountancy data. The programme was eventually transferred to the government-led Agricultural Board in 1915.2 H. Järvelä and A.-M. Aarnio, Maatalouden kannattavuustutkimus 75 vuotta (1987), p. 116. In Denmark a similar office appeared before 1918.3 See Lampe and Sharp, ‘Quest for Useful Knowledge’. Similar offices are reported in Sweden, Norway and the Kingdom of Poland over the course of the 1910s. Emulation was favoured by an active policy of the SBV to keep the accounting office in Brugg open to visitors from all over Europe: many generations of agricultural economists from all over Europe and the USA came to Brugg.4 H. Haumann and W. Baumann, ‘“… Um die Organisation des typischen Arbeitsbetriebes kennenzulernen”: Zu Aleksandr Čajanovs Schrift “Bäuerliche Wirtschaft in der Schweiz”’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte/Revue Suisse d’Histoire/Rivista Storica Svizzera (1997), pp. 1–26.

In 1913, when Laur attended the General Assembly of the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA), he read a report on Farm Accountancy Data Statistics that was received with great interest. At the end, the Austrian delegation proposed that the Institute collect information on farm accountancy offices in order to be able to ‘use the results of accounting institutions for its own statistical and economic research’.5 Institut International d’Agriculture, ‘Séances plénières de l’Assemblée Générale – Séance du samedi 10 Mai’, Actes de la quatrième Assemblée Générale, 6–12 Mai 1913 (1913), p. 59. An article by Laur in the Institute’s journal followed shortly afterwards in which he proposed a standardized nomenclature.6 E. Laur, ‘Basis of International Statistics of Agricultural Book-keeping’, Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Intelligence and Plant Diseases 5 (1914), pp. 171–85. The Institute assigned to the Italian agricultural economist Ernesto Marenghi the task of surveying all the existing farm accounting offices of Europe.7 E. Marenghi, ‘Organizzazione ed importanza degli uffici di contabilità per lo studio dell’economia dell’azienda agraria’, Rivista Italiana Di Ragioneria (1914), 4, pp. 162–75; 5, pp. 201–4; 6, pp. 241–6; 7, pp. 289–301; 8, pp. 329–38; 9, pp. 386–90: E. Marenghi, ‘Gli uffici di contabilità agraria nei diversi paesi’, Atti della Reale Accademia dei Georgofili 99 (1921), pp. 100–12. The work was resumed after the war, with the General Assembly of 1920, and led to the publication of a book by the IIA.8 Institut International d’Agriculture, Les offices de comptabilité agricole dans les différents pays (1924). In 1924, the IIA promoted the creation and/or reorganization of accounting offices in its member countries in order to collect data on a standardized questionnaire, devised by Paul Deslarzes, Laur’s man in Rome, using the nomenclature invented by Laur.

We can see the influence of these efforts in the Netherlands. Dutch accounting offices, such as those created in Friesland and Groningen, had emerged out of the necessity for farmers to have precise accounts of the profitability of their farms in the wake of the income tax reform,9 The effect of the income tax has been stressed in particular by Hendrikx and Gelderblom, ‘Accounting for Agricultural Development?’. but, following the Swiss example and the suggestions of the International Institute of Agriculture, they also began aggregating their data. By 1921–2, at the latest, the Directorate of Agriculture at the Ministry of Internal Affairs had begun collecting accountancy data from the network of the government’s agricultural consultants (Rijkslandbouwconsulenten), an institution created to foster the adoption of new technologies and management techniques.10 On the crucial importance of the consulenten and the winter schools they ran in educating Dutch farmers, see Zwarts, ‘Knowledge, Networks, and Niches’, pp. 105–9. The data, though, were scarce and unsystematic.11 Nationaal Archief ten Haag, Directie van de Landbouw: Afdeling Landbouw-Economische Aangelegenheden: Landbouwboekhouding 1923–1930, 2.11.08.02-6. Thus, in 1925, the Landbouw-Comité decided to create a Union of the Farm Accounting Offices (Vereeniging Landbouwboekhouden) that had come into existence after the introduction of income tax in the 1910s.

On 21 March 1926, the Secretary of the Landbouw-Comité, Dr H. Molhuysen, and J. A. Stoop, a tax inspector from Tiel, welcomed the representatives of farm accounting offices in the Hague. Stoop proposed they join forces and standardize their accounting methods.12 Nationaal Archief ten Haag, Circular letter from Molhuysen, No. 75/651 Onderwerp: Vereeniging Landbouwboekhouden, 7 Oct. 1926, Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden. ‘Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden: Oprichting’, n.d. 2.19.042.49-1. Apart from the Landbouw-Comité, the founding members of the Union were the accounting offices of the agricultural societies of Drente, Holland, Utrecht, Gheldria and Overijssel, Groninengen, North-Brabant and Zeland. The Union of Cheese Producers joined in 1927. Nationaal Archief ten Haag. Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden. ‘Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden: Toetreding Leden’, n.d. 2.19.042.49-2. Molhuysen to Stoop, 25 Feb. 1927. If, initially, the stated objective was to establish co-operation between tax inspectors (het fiscus) and farmers to overcome some of the problems caused by the income tax, in April 1926, Stoop and the agricultural economist Geert Minderhoud (former Secretary of the Groningen Society of Agriculture) introduced the idea of using the data for statistical purposes. They believed that accounting offices would be a much better source of information than the agricultural consultants. Stoop insisted therefore on the necessity to homogenize account books and inventories.13 Nationaal Archief ten Haag, Summary of the meeting of the heads of provincial accounting offices held in the Hague, 22 Apr. 1926, Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden. ‘Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden: Oprichting’, n.d. 2.19.042.49-1. The offices were asked to anonymize the information they collected from their members and transmit it to the Directorate of Agriculture, thus transforming private accounts into public data. Minderhoud explained that the models were to be the German Agricultural Council (Landwirtschaftsrat) and the Swiss Peasant Union.14 Nationaal Archief ten Haag, Notule van de vergadering van het bestuur en de commissie van toezicht van de vereeniging ‘Landbouwboekhouden’ of diensdag 30 Apr. 1929, Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden. ‘Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden: Correspondentie, Geregistreerd in Numerieke Dossierorde in Volgorde van Aanhangigmaking. 1929–1930’, 2.19.042.49–10. In this way, accounting offices that had been created for the sake of helping individual businesses could be turned into elements of the governance of agriculture.

Significantly, the Friesland Society of Agriculture and the CCLB (which, according to the members of the Landbouw-Comité, gathered half of the total number of farm accounts in the Netherlands)15 Nationaal Archief ten Haag, Summary of the meeting of the heads of provincial accounting offices held in The Hague, 31 Mar. 1926, Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden. ‘Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden, n.d. 2.19.042.49-4: Ingekomen vergaderstukken van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Landbouw-Comité. decided not to join this Union. In response to pressure from Stoop, the secretary of the Friesland Society of Agriculture clarified its position in November 1926, saying that they feared centralization, rejected too close a relationship with the tax authorities, adding that they really saw no need for the proposed uniformity.16 The response of the Frisian Society was summarized by J. A. Stoop to Molhuysen, 30 Nov. 1926, Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden. ‘Vereniging Landbouwboekhouden: Toetreding Leden’, Nationaal Archief ten Haag, n.d. 2.19.042.49-2. Although the CCLB over the course of the 1930s provided anonymized figures to the government, its managers firmly refused to bend the accounting methods devised for the private benefit of their members to the standards required by nationwide statistical analysis.

Internationally, Laur’s project of an international statistics of farm accountancy data seemed to bear fruit after 1928, when the IIA started collecting farm accountancy data for the statistical series Recueil de statistiques basées sur les données de la comptabilité agricole, which ran until the end of the 1930s. This statistical enterprise was underpinned by the broad support which Laur’s proposal received from European rural organizations, which strove to standardize farm accountancy data according to the principles established at the Bucharest International Congress of Agriculture in 1929. In the wake of the congress, Laur shared a circular letter to the directors of accounting offices and professors of agricultural economics across Europe proposing a standardized terminology for farm accountancy data – a terminology adopted by the Dutch Union of Farm Accounting Offices, among others.17 Laur to the Mssrs the directors of the accounting offices and the professors of agricultural economics, 15 Aug. 1929, Archivio dell’Accademia dei Georgofili, Fondo Tassinari, p. 66. Over the course of 10 years, the IIA was thus able to publish accountancy data from a number of countries, ultimately 25 in all.

Despite growing criticism on the side of statisticians (who questioned the actual representativeness of the surveys),18 C. Gini, ‘Il progettato trasferimento degli uffici di statistica agraria, Allegati ai verbali delle sedute nella sessione del 1926, Dicembre 1926 – V’, Annali di Statistica: Atti del Consiglio superiore di statistica, serie VII (1930), pp. 238–45. farm accountancy data remained an important tool of agricultural policy in the inter-war period. The most important agricultural economist in the USA, Henry C. Taylor – whose relationship with Laur was always polemical – insisted on the complementarity of accountancy data to general production and consumption statistics, focusing on their importance to the new system of quotas. He stressed how they permitted the establishment of natural advantage in production.19 The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Henry C. Taylor Papers, 1896–1968, letter dated Rome, 9 Nov. 1934 to Hobson. In 1938, after the foundation of the Office Centrale de la Comptabilité Agricole at Soissons, France, the agricultural economist Michel Augé Laribé could affirm the importance of farm accountancy data to establish ‘a general index of economic activity for agriculture’.20 Rapport sur la mission de M. Baumont à l’Assemblée de l’Institute International d’Agriculture, Mai 1938 (translated by the author from the French original), United Nations Library and Archives, Geneva, League of Nations Secretariat, Economic and Financial Section, File R4374/10A/944/944/Jacket2 – Agriculture – Collaboration between the Secretariat and the International Institute of Agriculture: general questions. Finally, in 1965, the European Economic Community, under the impulse of the Dutch Commissioner Sicco Mansholt of Groningen, decided that the ‘development of the Common Agricultural Policy’ required ‘that there should be available objective and relevant information on incomes in the various categories of agricultural holding and on the business operation of holdings coming within categories which call for special attention at Community level’. The Farm Accountancy Data Network was established to co-ordinate the activity of the various national farm accounting offices that existed or were to be established.21 Regulation No. 79/65/EEC of the Council of 15 June 1965 setting up a network for the collection of accountancy data on the incomes and business operation of agricultural holdings in the European Economic Community, DD I § (1965). http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/1965/79/oj/eng.