The most important feature of the standard is the requirement that biological assets are to be measured at their respective fair values as of each date of the statements of financial position. The imperative to deploy fair value accounting springs from the fact that there are long production periods for many crops (an extreme being forests under management for as long as thirty years before being harvested) and, even more typically, for livestock. In the absence of fair value accounting with changes in value being reported in operating results,
the entire earnings of a long-term production process might only be reported at lengthy intervals, which would not faithfully represent the underlying economic activities being carried out. This is entirely analogous to long-term construction projects, for which percentage-of completion accounting is commonly prescribed, for very similar reasons.