Managing the Agricultural Production Cycle with Farm Software
Summary
In the real world, much more complexity exists when additional crops, with different growing and marketing cycles, are added to the mix. The question becomes how one accounts for the expense of the seed, feed, and care of these farm products when the revenue doesn’t come in for another year or more. This encourages year-end distortions that obscure production cycle costs and analysis so a farm accounting system needs to report both cash and accrual. • Crop and livestock inventories and activities are usually measured in dual units (bushels and acres, head and hundredweight, tons and pounds, gallons and pints). • Business structures are complicated by informal partnerships, landlords, and entities, often with very limited internal accounting capacity to manage these complex relationships.