Consideration of natural assets and their depreciation in farm recording keeping is a relatively new subject area. Integrating calculations on resources deterioration/restitution in financial accounts will help to determine differentiated productivity and efficiency of farming activities according to the technologies applied.

Benefits result in terms of formulation of technical recommendations that integrate economic and environmental factors in a clear and simple way for use by decision-makers and farmers. Such recommendations should provide insights to farmers on how to improve, or at least to maintain resource availability and capability, making their livelihoods sustainable.

The AGSF Division and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) of the Netherlands have designed a methodology that accounts for changes in the quality and fertility of cultivated land and soil as an integrated input for calculating nutrient balances and sustainable farm income.

All the conceptual and practical aspects to understand and apply the methodology are available in a CD-Rom. The first document presents the Conceptual Framework, where discussions on the foundations of the methodology are provided.

A second document contains the Operational Guidelines, divided in two parts: the first part is designed to help users organize and manage socio-economic and bio-physical data necessary for establishing integrated economic and environmental accounts; the second part consists of the user guide for the computer workbook for data organization and processing.

A third document consists of a Computer Workbook. This Excel file contains the spreadsheets designed to organize and process the data required to apply the methodology. It is organized in a friendly way with practical instructions on how to manage the data entry and processing. Finally outcome spreadsheets show the results of the application of the methodology.

The final document contains the results from the application of a methodology in Colombia and Costa Rica for incorporating environmental analyses into a traditional accounting system at the farm level. English and Spanish version of these case studies can be download here.