Sharecropping

Sharecropping is a legal and economic arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant, the sharecropper, to work the land in exchange for a share of the crops produced, differing from ordinary tenant farming in that it typically grants the cultivator considerably less autonomy and lower economic and social standing. Under a typical sharecropping arrangement, the landowner supplies land along with housing, tools, seed, and working animals, while local merchants extend credit for food and other necessities; at the end of the season the sharecropper pays the landowner a portion of the harvest, commonly between one-half and two-thirds, then uses the remaining share to settle debts to merchants, often ending the season with little or no cash and sometimes deeper in debt through an associated crop-lien system in which the year's crop itself served as security for credit extended in advance. Sharecropping and closely related arrangements have existed across many regions and periods under various names, including the French metayage, the Italian mezzadria, and the Islamic muzaraa, and the system operated extensively in historical Ireland, Scotland, and colonial Africa. In the United States, sharecropping became widespread in the South following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, and the arrangement persists today in some rural, impoverished areas, particularly in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.