Bio-Economic Accounting in Agri-Food Supply Chains: Integrating Microbial Risk Management, Biological Asset Valuation, and ESG Disclosure

Agri-food value chains are under pressure from three directions at once: infectious disease in animals, strict financial reporting rules, and growing demands for sustainability reporting. As antimicrobial growth promoters are withdrawn from the market, livestock producers need affordable biological alternatives that hold animal performance at acceptable levels. Activity-based costing and life-cycle costing show how phytogenic additives and Bacillus-based direct-fed microbials change net farm income and cut costs that are usually hidden, such as those caused by mastitis. Beyond the herd, reducing aflatoxin contamination in the maize-dairy chain means putting a price on pre-harvest biological control, specifically the application of atoxigenic Aspergillus flavus strains, using loss accounting and partial budgeting. These microbial and herd-health measures feed directly into corporate financial reporting, in particular the fair value measurement of biological assets required by IAS 41. Value relevance models show that underlying microbiological risk shapes how biological assets are valued and how lenders set credit terms for livestock agribusinesses. Adding environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure scores to these financial measures connects commercial profitability to sustainability reporting. Finally, combining alternative socio-economic valuation methods for smallholder cooperatives with audited farm accounts produces a workable model that turns biological efficacy into measurable financial performance, more defensible fair value figures, and continued market access.