Tenant farming

A tenant farmer traditionally refers to a farmer who does not own the land that is owned by a landlord. The rights the tenant has over the land, and the form of payment, varies across different systems. In some systems, he could be evicted at whim (tenancy at will); in others, he signs a contract for a fixed number of years (tenancy for years or indenture). In Europe, most tenant farmers were peasants.

Types of tenant farming include sharecropping, some forms of peonage, and Métayage.

Tenant farming is distinct from the serfdom of medieval Europe, where the land and the serfs were legally inseparable. In later years, some workers contracted with lords to become serfs, and then the next generation changed status as hereditary serfs.

In the twentieth century modern farming in developed countries changed to be done primarily by large, often multi-national corporations. Various types of low skilled day workers, seasonal tenant farmers and highly educated technological employees are utilized. This changes the meaning of "tenant" farming to include the second meaning of the word "tenant", to occupy. The "tenant farmer" today may also mean those who live on the land they own, in farming cooperatives as well as individual family farms.

Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga. (1941)

History

The history farming starts when people began to cultivate the soil. They had small plots of land, and though inconclusive it seems that in different areas there were different types of societies and divisions of labor that continued to develop as time went on. Generally, these small units based on some type of familial or tribal association came under the protection and/or dominance of the Feudal/Feudal lords. These Lords began the current notion of land ownership, which created the tenant farmer.

Many types of tenant farming existed, often dependent upon the demands of the particular type of terrain and crop. For example, in the Unites States under the slavery system the slaves who had to work cotton or sugar were worked all the time and had relatively few rights. The crops demanded such incessant labor, the system seemed natural to the "owners." Those slaves who worked rice fields or other crops generally had many more rights, as those crops were less labor intensive. Often such tenant farmers could keep part of their production and sell it and keep the money gained. Some of these slaves were able to save and buy freedom and themselves and for their families. They were allowed Sundays off, whereas other workers of different crops may or may not have such available time.

In Europe and the United States, the method of sharecropping developed where tenant farmers worked in various arrangements under an owner who was often absent. Other methods of cooperative farming of the tenants/often owners themselves has been experimented with. The advent of technological scientific agriculture has changed what the tenant farmer does and what the term implies. Now there is a demand for much education and skill as well as the expected low-skilled labor tasks.

Sharcropping

Sharecropping is a system of agricultural production where a landowner allows a sharecropper to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land. There are a wide range of different situations and types of agreement: some governed by tradition, others by law. Legal contract systems such as métayage (French origin) and aparcería (Spanish) occur widely, and Islamic law has a traditional “musaqat” sharecropping agreement for the cultivation of orchards.

Sharecropping typically involves a relatively richer owner of the land and a poorer agricultural worker or farmer; although the reverse relationship, in which a poor landlord leases out to a rich tenant also exists. The typical form of sharecropping is generally seen as exploitative, particularly with large holdings of land where there is evident disparity of wealth between the parties. 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. (Sharecropping is distinguished from serfdom in that sharecroppers have freedom in their private lives and, at least in theory, freedom to leave the land; and distinguished from indenture in sharecroppers’ entitlement to a share of production and, at least in theory, freedom to delegate the work to others.) Sharecropping is often described as a vicious cycle, where though the tenant may originally seem to have rights, as time goes on they can become trapped in debt incurred as they must buy tools and supplies from the landlord's store at exorbitant prices and thus never be able to get out of debt.

Forms of Agreements

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. One, workers can rent plots of land from the owner for a certain sum, and keep the whole crop. Second, workers work on the land and earn a fixed wage from the land owner, but keep none of the crop. Lastly, workers can neither work nor get paid from the land owner, so the worker and land owner each keep a share of the crop. The advantages of sharecropping in other situations include enabling access for women to arable land where ownership rights are vested only in men.

The system occurred extensively in colonial Africa, Scotland, and Ireland and came into wide use in the United States during the Reconstruction era (1865-1876) largely as a replacement to the previous slavery system. Its use 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 India.

Africa

In colonial South 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. The 1913 Natives Land Act 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 labourers. In the 1960s generous subsidies to white farmers meant that most farmers could now afford to work their entire farms, and sharecropping virtually disappeared.

The arrangement has reappeared in other African countries in modern times, including Ghana and Zimbabwe.

Peonage

In archaic Spaish, the word meant a person who travelled by foot rather than on a horse (caballero). It currently means a chess pawn, or a trompo (a kind of top). In Latin America and other Spanish-speaking countries during the colonial period they utilized a hacienda system where laborers were part of an estate. Though not quite belonging to the land itself, they could resemble the Feudal serf in other matters. In some Latin American countries they are currently referred to as campesinos. The term peon as refers to other low skilled low status jobs, but has been a common term for the tenant, and sometimes captive farmers.

Under the conquistadors, the peonage was needed to farm newly acquired lands and often was a form of indentured servitude.

Metayage

TheMetayage' system (Fr. métayage) is the cultivation of land for a proprietor by one who receives a proportion of the produce, as a kind of sharecropping.

Origin and function

Métayage was available under Roman law, although it was not in wide spread use.

In the area that is now northern Italy and southeastern France, the post Black Death population explosion of the late middle ages combined with the relative lack of free land made métayage an attractive system for both landowner and farmer. Once institutionalized, it continued long into the 18th Century although the base causes had been relieved by emigration to the New World.

Métayage was used early in the Middle Ages in northern France and the Rhinelands, where burgeoning prosperity encouraged large-scale vineyard planting, similar to what the ancient Romans had accomplished utilizing slave labor. Called complant, a laborer (fr Prendeur) would offer to plant and tend to an uncultivated parcel of land belonging to a land owner (fr. Bailleur). The prendeur would have ownership of the vines and the bailleur would receive anywhere from a third to two thirds of the vines' production in exchange for the use of his soil. This system was used extensively in planting the Champagne region. Bailleur was also used as the name for the proprietor under métayage.

In Italy and France, respectively, it was called mezzeria and métayage, or halving—the halving, that is, of the produce of the soil between landowner and land-holder. Halving didn't imply equal amounts of the produce, but rather division according to agreement. The produce was divisible in certain definite proportions, which must obviously vary with the varying fertility of the soil and other circumstances, and which do in practice vary so much that the landlord's share was sometimes as much as two-thirds, sometimes as little as one-third. Sometimes the landlord supplied all the stock, sometimes only part—the cattle and seed perhaps, while the farmer provided the implements; or perhaps only half the seed and half the cattle, the farmer finding the other halves. Thus the instrumentum fundi of Roman Law was combined within métayage. Taxes were also frequently divided, being paid wholly by one or the other, or jointly by both.

In the 18th Century métayage agreements began to give way to agreements to share profits from the sale of the crops and to straight tenant farming, although the practice in it’s original form could still be found in isolated communities until the early 20th Century. As the métayage practice changed, the term colonat partiaire began to be applied to the old practice of sharing-out the actual crop, while métayage was used for the sharing-out of the proceeds from the sale of the crops. Colonat partiaire was still practiced in the French overseas departments, notably Réunion until 2006 when it was ablolished.

In France there was also a system termed métayage par groupes, which consisted in letting a considerable farm, not to one métayer, but to an association of several, who would work together for the general good, under the supervision of either the landlord, or his bailiff. This arrangement got over the difficulty of finding tenants possessed of sufficient capital and labour to run the larger farms.

In France, since 1983, these métayage and similar farming contracts have been regulated by Livre IV of the Rural Code.

Localities

The system was once universal in certain provinces of Italy and France, and prevailed in places there through the end of the nineteenth century. Similar systems formerly existed in Portugal, Castile , and in Greece, and in the countries bordering on the Danube. Métayage was used in French colonies, particularly after the demise of slavery. And because of its utility métayage spread to nearby British colonies such as Nevis, St. Lucia and Tobago. It still occurs in former French possessions, particularly in Madagascar.

The term métayage is also applied to modern-day flexible cash leases in French-speakingCanada.

Criticism

English writers were unanimous, until JS Mill adopted a different tone, in condemning the métayage system. They judged it by its appearance in France, where under the ancien régime all direct taxes were paid by the métayer with the noble landowner being exempt. With the taxes being assessed according to the visible produce of the soil, they operated as penalties upon productiveness. Under this system, a métayer could fancied that his interest lay less in exerting himself to augment the total share to be divided between himself and his landlord and instead be encouraged to defraud the latter part of his rightful share. This is partly due to the métayer relative state of destitute with the fixity of his tenure-without which the metayage cannot prosper. French metayers, in Arthur Young's time, were "removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of their landlords," and so in general they so remained.

In 1819 Simonde de Sismondi expressed dissatisfaction with the institution of métayage because it reinforced the poverty of the peasants and prevented any social or cultural development.

Yet even in France, although métayage and extreme rural poverty usually coincided, there were provinces where the contrary was the fact, as it was also in Italy, specially on the plains of Lombardy. An explanation of the contrasts presented by métayage in different regions is not far to seek. Métayage, in order to be in any measure worthy of commendation, must be a genuine partnership, one in which there is no sleeping partner, but in the affairs of which the landlord, as well as the tenant, takes an active part. Wherever this applied, the results of métayage appeared to be as eminently satisfactory, as they were decidedly the reverse wherever the landlords held themselves aloof.

Modern Tenancy in Farming

The Family Farm

Historically, all land was occupied. Only recently with the advent of technological, corporate farming in developed countries has the phenomena of non-tenant farming occurred.

On a family farm, the owner is the tenant and does not usually lease the land to be worked. Such a family enterprise can be a source of great quality of life, but the work is always very demanding even when all is prosperous. This form emerged in Europe and the United States with the demise of Absolute Monarchyand the development of democracy and a middle class in Europe and the United States. The family farm has a continuous existance in developing countries where often larger extended families help work and organize it through their various structures of tribe and clan.

In the United States, as the frontier expanded in a classless society made up of many "self made" men, the family farm became a vehicle of entrepreneurship that could enrich beyond previous expectations. As technology increased, however, the larger farms needed more workers and the beginnings of corporate farming emerged. When the United States government called the loans in unexpectedly in the 1980's, referred to as the farm crisis, there was much public outcry in popular culture and legislature but the family farm had long been economically doomed and the major shift in the United States was toward non-tenant farming done by large corporations that used day laborers, machines and highly skilled professionals.

The large profits were noted by other farming enterprises in other developing countries, and soon others had begun this newer method of farming.

Farmer's Cooperatives

Much continued dialog continues about the virtue of the family farm, particularly in terms of quality of life and quality of the food products themselves. Cooperative farming has been one way of overcoming the economic limitations of the family farm.

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. The Wisconsin Dairy cooperatives continue to be a successful example of tenant farming in the modern developed world. The first dairy cooperative in the United States was in 1841 in Jefferson County, Wisconsin and was founded by European immigrants who knew a lot about dairy farming from their old home. These dairy cooperatives have remained viable throughout the twentieth century by utilizing continuous education and improvement in both the agriculture technology and methods and new social changes. One challenge was met through the successful lobbying of the United States congress for subsides to provide surplus cheese for the needy based on the nutrition of the dairy product.

References

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

All links retrieved November 14, 2007.

• A History of American Agriculture
• Agricultural Cooperatives in the 21st Century
• World of the Tenant Farmer Texas beyond History

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