Sharecropping

Sharecropping or sharefarming is a system of farming in which farmers work a parcel of land which they do not own in return for a portion of the parcel's crop production and/or a wage. 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), and is used in many rural poor areas today, notably in India. This system has more than a passing similarity to feudal serfdom, and is distinguished from it by the fact that sharecroppers have the legal right to leave their land and to conduct their private lives as they see fit, and the fact that the landowner has no legal rights over them. In practice, these legal rights do not necessarily prevail, however.

United States

Sharecroppers at roadside after eviction (1936)

Sharecropping became widespread as a response to economic upheaval caused by the emancipation of slaves and disenfranchisement of poor whites in the agricultural South during Reconstruction. Plantations had first relied on Indentured servants to function being used as cheap labor. Prior to emancipation, sharecropping was limited to poor landless whites, usually working marginal lands for absentee landlords. Following emancipation, sharecropping came to be an economic arrangement that largely maintained the status quo between black and white through legal means. The mass influx of immigrants in the 1900's brought an increase in sharecropping during the World War I era. Sharecroppers worked a section of the plantation independently, usually growing cotton, tobacco, rice, and other cash crops and received a small portion of the parcel's output.

Though the arrangement protected sharecroppers from the negative effects of a bad crop, many sharecroppers (both black and white) were economically confined to serf-like conditions of poverty. To work the land, sharecroppers must buy seed and implements, sometimes from the plantation owner who may charge exorbitant prices against the sharecropper's next season. Arrangements also typically gave half or less of the crop to the sharecropper, and the sale price in some cases was set by the landowner. Lacking the resources to market their crops independently, the sharecropper might be compensated in scrip redeemable only at the plantation.

Thus the cost of production and price of sale were both largely controlled by the land owner, with the sharecropper having little, if any, margin for profit. These factors made sharecroppers dependent on the plantation owners in a way similar to slavery. The sharecropping system in the U.S. increased during the Great Depression with the creation of tenant farmers following the failure of many small farms throughout the Dustbowl. Traditional sharecropping declined after mechanization of farm work became economical in the mid-20th-century. As a result, many sharecroppers were forced off the farms, and migrated to the industrialized North to work in factories, or become migrant workers in the West during World War II.

Modern sharecropping

A variation on this system still exists in places like rural Montana as a way for landowners to farm their land without owning the required equipment. It goes by names like "custom haying". As an example, a landowner might have 50 acres (202,000 m²) of land, which would be capable of producing roughly 300 tons of alfalfa in a year. At a market rate of US$75 per ton, the annual revenue from sale of the alfalfa would be insufficient to justify purchasing a tractor, swather, baler, and the other equipment required for modern hay farming. The solution is to have a modern-day sharecropper provide all of the equipment and do all of the work in return for a share of the crop (typically half or more).

This system is in widespread use in the midwestern Corn Belt today though it is rarely called that. The farmer provides all of the labor and machinery while the landowner provides the land. Typically fertilizer and herbicide costs are shared between the two. They also share the income from the crops harvested. Arrangements vary from community to community. In Illinois some share on a 50/50 basis while others share 60% to the farmer and 40% to the landowner. Some less productive land is shared at 2/3 to the farmer and 1/3 to the landowner, though this arrangement is disappearing. Strangely this system just goes by the name "rented land" as opposed to another method called "cash rent".

Cash rent is a system whereby the farmer pays the landowner a cash fee to cultivate a particular property for a specific period of time. The farmer then keeps all of the income. This practice is very common in Tobacco agriculture in North Carolina and Virginia. Individual properties have specific annual "allotments" from the USDA which may be cultivated for Tobacco, and specific allotments for other crops as well. Property owners may choose to lease or "sell" their annual allotments to others for agreed periods of time.

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 Zimbabwe.

Sharemilking

Traditionally, 'sharecropping', as the name implies, has been primarily a crop oriented practice. However, the same model can be, and is, applied to livestock, especially dairy cows. This 'sharemilking' model is particularly common in New Zealand. Typically the sharemilker owns their own cows, and will often take the herd with them when shifting between properties. The model is not exploitative, and over time, sharemilkers often slowly buy out the landholder, or alternatively use it as a method to save for their own property [1].

Farmer's Cooperatives

Cooperative farming exists in many forms throughout the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world. Various arrangments 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.

Non-agricultural usages

The term sharecropping has also become common in Science fiction criticism, by analogy with the agricultural system, to describe the practice of authors writing stories within another author's established setting (usually for an anthology with the setting's owner's name most prominently displayed on the book cover).

See also

• Reconstruction
• History of the United States (1865-1918)
• Tenant farmer

External links

• A sharecropping example
• [2]
• [3]

Further reading

• Woodman, Harold D. New South - New Law: The legal foundations of credit and labor relations in the Postbellum agricultural South. Louisiana State University Press. 1995. 125 pages. ISBN 0807119415.
• Poor Whites - The Georgia Encyclopedia (history)
• A Review of Sharemilking: 1972-1996. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, New Zealand.