There is rarely a shared conception of profit for a number of reasons: some farmer
consider their salaries (or what remains for them after expenses are covered) as profit while others
set aside a salary for farm partners and consider profit to exclude this salary, not all farmers amortize
their accounting, and many reinvest all operating surplus into the farm to make it more productive
or to prevent reporting a profit so as to avoid taxes. Because of these differences, we asked a few
related questions to get at profitability without doing a detailed accounting ourselves of each
operation.