Accounting and Food Provisioning for Public Interest: The Case of the Azienda Annonaria di Vigevano (1915-1920)

Acknowledging the call for more accounting research in the field of food production and trade, this study aims at filling this gap under an historical perspective. More specifically, the research objectives are twofold: - - to extend the understanding of accounting records of the food provisioning system in an Italian local authority at that time; - to demonstrate how the accounting language of the provisioning system depicted the socio-economic and political environment of that local context. In order to achieve the research objectives aforementioned, the study introduces the theme of food procurement and provisioning as a public interest. Then, a critical literature review on the use of accounting language for knowing the past has been carried out. Adopting an interpretative research methodology, the case of the “Azienda Annonaria di Vigevano” has been explored. It represented a local public entity, set up by the Municipality of Vigevano in Lombardy (Northern Italy) for developing the provisioning system during the First World War. From the development of this research, the preliminary findings will be expected. These concern: - an extended knowledge on “food accounting” in the First World War; - an interpretation of accounting under a social and political viewpoints; - a major understanding of the relationship between accounting and local community needs; - the usefulness of the critical accounting framework for accounting history research. This study explores a new accounting research field, which is “food accounting”, that refers to the accounting records of food production and trade. The implications of the research are related to the further speculations on “food accounting” as a moral and political-economy practice both in historical or contemporary studies.