ISB Paper Series - Institute for Social Banking

Abstract
“Sustainability values in the operating results of agricultural enterprises.
An approach to generate social and ecological values within financial account-­ing”
by Christian Hiß
Agricultural enterprises create greater impacts than is displayed in their enterprise
results. Many social and ecological services, such as the shaping of a diverse
cultural landscape, conservation of genetic resources and increase of soil fertility are
not valued and therefore not provided. The companies which are attentive to
sustainable management are generally not seen as profitable. The reason for this is
that only the costs, and not the services, are considered by regular accountancy
procedures. From my experience and my current work as a managing director of a
citizen shareholder corporation, these services are decisive for future agriculture. A
necessary precondition for improving the utilisation of these added values, is a
change of instruments in the financial accounting method. In this work I have
developed an instrument for the sustainable analysis of agricultural enterprises. With
the insights provided by this instrument, sustainable services can be generated
directly out of financial accountancy. The derived values are used for enterprise
planning, monitoring of the enterprise and for comparative analysis with other
enterprises.
This paper is written in German language.
Institute for Social Banking | ISB Paper Series, No. 8, October 2011 | www.social-­‐banking.org