The COVID 19 pandemic greatly reduced the possibility to visit archives that were essential to the completion of the project. Despite this situation, a first survey of the main accounting offices in Europe was conducted. In particular, the Library of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Basel, the Federal Swiss Archive and the Archive for Agricultural History of Bern enabled me to research the power networks that made the creation of an international series of farm accountancy data possible, while the archive of the Food and Agricultural Organization delivered a wealth of material on international agricultural statistics of the early 20th century.
What emerged from the research is that:
• the network of farm accountancy offices that is at the origins of the Farm Accountancy Data Network of the European Union arose in the 1910s and 1920s through a combined action of farmers’ leaders from across the Continent who had scientific and political legitimation alike.
• farm accounting offices required, in order to function, a high degree of consensus among farmers, and the diffusion of book-keeping techniques among farmers was the result of a two-ways process of adaptation of farmers and accounting experts.
• There is a high degree of continuity between the farmers’ organizations that promoted the creation of accounting offices in the 1910s and 1920s, and those who tried to govern international markets for agricultural commodities in the 1900s with the creation of the International Institute of Agriculture.
• Many of the concerns with global markets that dominated the 1920s and 1930s had emerged previously around the century turn as concerns with an unregulated financialization of global markets.
As a result I was able to present in different occasions, as part of the dissemination strategy, on the functioning of farm accounting offices, on the network of European farmers’ leaders, on the creation of international agricultural statistics. Unfortunately, the restrictions determined by the pandemics significantly disrupted the process of writing. Two articles are now close to completion: one already submitted on the International Institute of Agriculture and its statistics and one almost ready for submission (on Laur’s international network). Other publications will follow within and beyond the framework of the project. In particular, together with Nathalie Joly I am submitting a book proposal to Boydell Publishers for an edited volume on accounting and book-keeping in agriculture and with Niccolò Mignemi I am preparing a special issue on data in agricultural which has been accepted by the journal Histoire et Mésure
