Sharecropping is a system of agriculture or
agricultural production in which a landowner allows a tenant to use
the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land
(e.g., 50 percent of the crop). This should not be confused with a
crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to
use the land in return for a fixed amount of crop per unit of land
(e.g., 1 ton per hectare). Sharecropping has a long history and
there are a wide range of different situations and types of
agreements that have encompassed the system. Some are governed by
tradition, others by law. Legal contract systems such as the
Italian mezzadria, the French
métayage, and Spanish Mediero occur widely.
Islamic law contains a traditional “musaqat”
sharecropping agreement for the cultivation of
orchards.
Overview
Sharecropping typically is a contract between land owner and a farm
hand. The system succeeds when it has benefits and costs for both
the owners and the croppers. It encourages the cropper to remain on
the land throughout the harvest season to work their land, solving
the harvest rush problem. At the same time, since the cropper pays
in shares of his harvest, owners and croppers share the risk of
harvests being large or small and prices being high or low. Because
tenants benefit from larger harvests, they have an incentive to
work harder and invest in better methods than in a slave plantation
system. However, by dividing the working force into many individual
workers, large farms no longer benefit from
economies of scale. On the whole,
sharecropping was not as economically efficient as the gang
agriculture of slave plantations. The advantages of sharecropping
in other situations include enabling access for women to arable
land where ownership rights are vested only in men.
Sharecropping occurred extensively in
colonial Africa, Scotland
, and
Ireland
, and came into wide use in the Southern United States during the
Reconstruction era
(1865-1877). After
the American Civil War many planters had ample land but little
money for wages. At the same time most of the former slaves were
uneducated and impoverished. The solution was the sharecropping
system, which continued the workers in the routine of cotton
cultivation under rigid supervision.
Economic features of
the system were gradually extended to poor white farmers.[53265] Use of the sharecropper system has also been
identified in England
(as the
practice of "farming to halves"). It is still used in
many rural poor areas today, notably in Pakistan
and in
India
.
Although there is a perception that sharecropping was
exploitative,“Evidence from around the world suggests that
sharecropping is often a way for differently endowed enterprises to
pool resources to mutual benefit, overcoming credit restraints and
helping to manage risk.”
It can have more than a passing similarity to
serfdom or
indenture, and it has therefore been seen
as an issue of
land reform in contexts
such as the
Mexican Revolution.
However, Nyambara states that Eurocentric historiographical devices
like ‘feudalism’ or ‘slavery’ often qualified by weak prefixes like
‘semi-’ or ‘quasi-’ are not helpful in understanding the
antecedents and functions of sharecropping in Africa.
[53266]
Sharecropping agreements can however be made fairly, as a form of
tenant farming or
sharefarming that has a variable rental
payment, paid in arrears. There are three different types of
contracts.
- Workers can rent plots of land from the owner for a certain sum
and keep the whole crop.
- Workers work on the land and earn a fixed wage from the land
owner but keep some of the crop.
- No money changes hands but the worker and land owner each keep
a share of the crop.
Regions
Africa
In settler colonies of colonial Africa, sharecropping was a feature
of the agricultural life. White farmers, who owned most of the
land, were frequently unable to work the whole of their farm for
lack of capital. They therefore allowed black farmers to work the
excess on a sharecropping basis. In South Africa the 1913
Natives' Land Act [53267]outlawed the ownership of land by blacks
in areas designated for white ownership and effectively reduced the
status of most sharecroppers to
tenant
farmers and then to farm laborers. In the 1960s, generous
subsidies to white farmers meant that most farmers could afford to
work their entire farms, and sharecropping faded out.
The
arrangement has reappeared in other African countries in modern
times, including Ghana
and Zimbabwe
.
United States
Although
the sharecropping system was primarily a post Civil War
development, it did exist in antebellum
Mississippi, especially in the northeastern part of the state, an
area with few slaves or plantations,[53268] and most probably also existed in Tennessee
. [53269]
After the
Civil War planters had to borrow
money to produce crops. Interest rates on these loans were around
15%. The indebtedness of cotton planters increased through the
early 1940s, and the average plantation fell into bankruptcy about
every twenty years. It is against this backdrop that owners
maintained their concentrated ownership of the land.
In
Reconstruction-era
United
States
, sharecropping was a solution for penniless
freedmen to operate their own farms.
It was a stage beyond simple hired labor, because the sharecropper
had an annual contract. During Reconstruction, the
Freedman's Bureau wrote and enforced the
contracts.
Croppers were assigned a plot of land to work, and in exchange owed
the owner a share of the crop at the end of the season, usually
one-half. The owner provided the tools and farm animals. Farmers
who owned their own mule and plow were at a higher stage and are
called
tenant farmers; they paid the
landowner less, usually only a third of each crop. In both cases
the farmer kept the produce of gardens.The sharecropper purchased
seed, tools and fertilizer, as well as food and clothing, on credit
from a local merchant, or sometimes from a plantation store. When
the harvest came, the cropper would harvest the whole crop and sell
it to the merchant who had extended credit. Purchases and the
landowner's share were deducted and the cropper kept the
difference—or added to his debt.
In the late 19th century sharecropping created a stable, low-cost
work force that replaced slave labor; it was the bottom rung in the
southern tenancy ladder. Sharecropping, along with tenant farming,
was a dominant form in the cotton South from the 1870s to the
1950s, among both blacks and whites, but it has largely
disappeared.
20th century
By the early 1930s there were 5.5 million white tenants,
sharecroppers, and mixed cropping/laborers in the United States,
and 3 million blacks. In Tennessee whites made up two thirds or
more of the sharecroppers.
[53270] In Mississippi, by 1900, 36% of all
white farmers were tenants or sharecroppers, while 85 percent of
black farmers were.
[53271]Sharecropping continued to be a significant
institution in Tennessee agriculture for more than sixty years
after the
Civil War, peaking in importance
in the early 1930s, when sharecroppers operated approximately
one-third of all farm units in the state.
[53272]
The situation of landless farmers who challenged the system in the
rural south as late as 1941 has been described thus: "he is at once
a target subject of ridicule and vitriolic denunciation; he may
even be waylaid by hooded or unhooded leaders of the community,
some of whom may be public officials. If a white man persists in
'causing trouble', the
night riders may
pay him a visit, or the officials may haul him into court; if he is
a Negro, a mob may hunt him down."
Sharecroppers formed unions in the 1930s, beginning in Tallapoosa
County, Alabama in 1931, and Arkansas in 1934. Membership in the
Southern Tenant Farmers Union included both blacks and poor whites.
As leadership strengthened, meetings became more successful, and
protest became more vigorous, landlords responded with a wave of
terror.
Sharecroppers' strikes in Arkansas and the Bootheel of Missouri,
the 1939 Missouri Sharecroppers' Strike, were documented in "Oh
Freedom After While".
In the 1930s and 1940s increasing mechanization virtually brought
the institution of sharecropping to an end in the United States.
[53273][53274]
Sharecropping agreements
Typically, a sharecropping agreement would specify which party was
expected to cover certain expenses, like seed, fertilizer, weed
control, irrigation district assessments, and fuel. Sometimes the
sharecropper covers those costs, but they expect a larger share of
the crop in return. The agreement should also indicate whether the
sharecropper would use his own equipment to raise the crops, or use
the landlord's equipment. The agreement should also indicate
whether the landlord will pick up his or her share of the crop in
the field, or whether the sharecropper will deliver it (and where
it will be delivered.)
For example, a landowner may have a sharecropper farming an
irrigated hayfield. The sharecropper uses his own equipment, and
covers all the costs of fuel and fertilizer. The landowner pays the
irrigation district assessments and does the irrigating himself.
The sharecropper cuts and bales the hay, and delivers one-third of
the baled hay to the landlord's feedlot. The sharecropper might
also leave the landlord's share of the baled hay in the field,
where the landlord would fetch it when he wanted hay.
Another arrangement could have the sharecropper delivering the
landlord's share of the product to market, in which case the
landlord would get his share in the form of the sale proceeds. In
that case, the agreement should indicate the timing of the delivery
to market, which can have a significant effect on the ultimate
price of some crops. The market timing decision should probably be
decided shortly before harvest, so that the landlord has more
complete information about the area's harvest, to determine whether
the crop will earn more money immediately after harvest, or whether
it should be stored until the price rises. Market timing can entail
storage costs and losses to spoilage as well, for some crops.
Farmer's cooperatives
Cooperative farming exists in many forms
throughout the United States, Canada
, and the
rest of the world. Various arrangements can be made through
collective bargaining or purchasing to get the best deals on seeds,
supplies, and equipment. For example, members of a farmer's
cooperative who cannot afford heavy equipment of their own can
lease them for nominal fees from the cooperative. Farmers
cooperatives can also allow groups of small farmers and dairymen to
manage pricing and prevent undercutting by competitors.
Economic theories of share tenancy
The theory of share tenancy was long dominated by
Alfred Marshall's famous footnote 5, wherein
he illustrated the inefficiency of agricultural share-contracting.
Steven N.S. Cheung (1969), challenged this view,
showing that with sufficient competition and in the absence of
transaction costs, share tenancy will be equivalent to competitive
labor markets and therefore efficient. He also showed that in the
presence of transaction costs, share-contracting may be preferred
to either wage contracts or rent contracts—due to the mitigation of
labor shirking and the provision of risk sharing. Stigitz (1974,
1988), suggested that if share tenancy is only a labor contract,
then it is only pairwise-efficient and that land-to-the-tiller
reform would improve social efficiency by removing the necessity
for labor contracts in the first place. Reid (1973), Murrel (1983),
Roumasset (1995) and Allen and Lueck (2004) provided
transaction cost theories of
share-contracting, wherein tenancy is more of a partnership than a
labor contract and both landlord and tenant provide multiple
inputs.
References
Further reading
- Allen, D. W and D. Lueck. "Contract Choice in Modern
Agriculture: Cash Rent versus Cropshare," Journal of Law and
Economics, (1992) v. 35, pp. 397-426.
- Garrett, Martin A., and Zhenhui Xu. "The Efficiency of
Sharecropping: Evidence from the Postbellum South," Southern
Economic Journal, Vol. 69, 2003
- Grubbs, Donald H. Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant
Farmer's Union and the New Deal (1971)
- Hurt, R. Douglas Hurt. African American Life in the Rural
South, 1900-1950 (2003)
- Liebowitz, Jonathan J. "Tenants, Sharecroppers, and the French
Agricultural Depression of the Late Nineteenth Century,"
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 19, No. 3
(Winter, 1989), pp. 429-445 in
JSTOR
- Shaban, R. A. "Testing Between Competing Models of
Sharecropping," Journal of Political Economy, (1987)
95(5), pp. 893-920.
- Singh, N. "Theories of Sharecropping," in P. Bardhan. ed.,
The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, (1989)
pp. 33-72.
- Southworth, Caleb. "Aid to Sharecroppers: How Agrarian Class
Structure and Tenant-Farmer Politics Influenced Federal Relief in
the South, 1933-1935," Social Science History, Vol. 26,
No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 33-70
- Stiglitz, J. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Share Cropping,"
Review of Economic Studies, (1974) v.41 219-255.
- Turner, Howard A. "Farm Tenancy Distribution and Trends in the
United States," Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 4, No.
4, Farm Tenancy (Oct., 1937), pp. 424-433 in
JSTOR
- Virts, Nancy. "The Efficiency of Southern Tenant Plantations,
1900-1945," Journal of Economic History, Vol. 51, No. 2
(Jun., 1991), pp. 385-395 in
JSTOR
See also