share-cropping

The general term given to a variety of arrangements whereby landowners receive a portion of the harvest (‘share of the crop’) from those whom they allow to work their land. A classic example developed after the end of the Civil War in the United States. Freed Black slaves demanded their ‘forty acres and a mule’, and by 1868 share-cropping was the dominant economic arrangement in southern agriculture.

Various explanations have been offered for the emergence of share-cropping. One emphasizes favourable economic preconditions, such as a large class of landholders, combined with shortage of labour, and lack of incentives to mechanize. Neo-classical economists argue that share-cropping is a rational market response advantageous to both sides. However, an alternative explanation suggests that this arrangement typically meets the preferences of neither party, and arises through a ‘constriction of possibilities’ and only when all other alternatives have been defeated. (In the American South, for example, Blacks wanted full economic independence while White plantation owners sought an equivalent to slave labour.)

For an excellent case-study see, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping (1993). See also peasants.