Share-cropping

In Europe, the share-cropping is a type of rural lease in which an owner, the financial backer, entrusts to a sharecropper the responsibility to cultivate a ground in exchange of part of harvest.

Presentation

The sharecropper generally pays his owner with the money obtained of the sale of his products. If it directly gives the latter to him before selling them, one speaks rather about Colonat partiaire.

At all events, the financial backer thus shares with his sharecropper the risks of harvest, contrary to the farm . Often, it intervenes directly in the management of the exploitation.

In the beginning, the sharecropper transferred with his owner half of his sales, from where etymology. Today, the transferred proportion is fixed in the lease during its negotiation.

Formerly majority, this type of lease however regressed until becoming marginal. The share of the financial backer cannot exceed the third of them any more.

Type of beams

In France, with regard to the Tenant farming S, there exist several types of beams. Thus in the area of the Suze-on-Sarthe in the Sarthe, there existed:

  • the Farming lease: each year, the farmer (i.e. that which takes a tenant farming) pays a fixed sum with the owner. This sum is registered in the lease and often pours in two equal payments.

  • the Lease with half: it consists in pouring half of harvest to the owner. This lease existed as well at the Laboureur S as at Bordager S.

It is also noted that the lease with half tends to rarefy at the end of the 17th century, and that the farming lease spreads at the 18th century.

In the work agriculture in Western Europe , one speaks about " farming lease " and of " share-cropping or lease with equal colony " (i.e. lease with half). The beams of this Sarthe-native area do not use the " term; métayage" ; it is writing is " lease with ferme" or " lease with moitié". The " term; métayer" is used little.

External bonds

  • You will find here (pdf, 2,2Mo) an example of notarial act of share-cropping like its retranscription, gone back to 1873.
The term of sharecropper is replaced here by " méger" , term then used in Provence.

  • In France, the rural beams are narrowly regulated by book IV of the rural Code.

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