The owner is entitled to half the grain, not half the revenue from selling the grain. But we cannot understand what difference that can make, and we do not understand the government to be arguing that it does make any difference. The provision for payment of rent in kind rather than in cash allows the parties to the lease to share the risk of fluctuations in the size and market price of the farm's crop. The government argues that the trust agreed to pay half the cost of producing the grain. If true, this would make a difference.
Profits are sales net of cost.
But the trust is not paying half the cost. It is paying half of some costs. The record is silent on the total cost of producing grain on the trust's farm. The government does not care. Its position is that anything more than a de minimis con- tribution by the owner to the cost of producing the farm's output transforms a sharecropping contract from a true lease to a partnership.