Share cropping and tenant farming

Tenant farmers also had the flexibility to move to different farms or regions if they desired, providing them with greater mobility and independence. Both sharecropping and tenant farming had their advantages and disadvantages. Sharecropping provided an opportunity for individuals with limited resources to access land and engage in agricultural production.

It allowed them to have a place to live and work, even if they did not have the means to purchase land. However, the system often perpetuated poverty and indebtedness, as sharecroppers struggled to break free from the cycle of debt and improve their economic conditions. On the other hand, tenant farming offered more stability and autonomy.

Tenant farmers had the opportunity to accumulate wealth and improve their economic status through their own efforts. However, they still faced challenges such as fluctuating crop prices and the risk of eviction if they failed to meet their financial obligations. In conclusion, sharecropping and tenant farming were two distinct agricultural systems that emerged in the post-Civil War era.

While both systems involved labor arrangements in agriculture, they differed in terms of land ownership, financial obligations, and levels of autonomy. Sharecropping often left individuals trapped in cycles of debt and limited their decision-making power, while tenant farming provided more stability and independence. Understanding the attributes of these systems is crucial for comprehending the complexities of rural life in the South during this period and the lasting impact they had on the socioeconomic fabric of the region.

Comparisons may contain inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Please report any issues. This vs. That Explore Comparisons. Attribute Sharecropping Tenant Farming Definition System where landowners provide land, tools, and supplies to farmers in exchange for a share of the crops produced. Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.

Different types of sharecropping have been practiced worldwide for centuries, but with the southern economy in disarray after the abolition of slavery and the devastation of the Civil War, sharecropping enabled landowners to reestablish a labor force, while giving poor whites and freed Black people a means of subsistence. About two-thirds of sharecroppers were white, and one-third were Black.

The system severely restricted the economic mobility of the laborers, leading to conflicts during the Reconstruction era. During the final months of the Civil Wartens of thousands of freed enslaved people left their plantations to follow the victorious Union Army troops of General William T. Sherman across Georgia and the Carolinas. In Januaryin an effort to address the issues caused by this growing number of refugees, Sherman issued Special Field Order Number 15a temporary plan granting each freed family 40 acres of land on the islands and coastal region of Georgia.

The Union Army also donated some of its mules, unneeded for battle purposes, to the former enslaved people. Did you know? Inonly around 30, African Americans in the South owned land usually small plotscompared with 4 million others who did not. Difference Between People. By Dmitri Ivanov. July 19, Key Takeaways Sharecropping is a traditional cropping system that involves landowners and farmers, where the farmer cultivates the land and the yield is divided between both parties.

The main difference between the two systems is the payment structure and the distribution of risk between the landowner and the tenant. What is Sharecropping? What is Tenant Farming? What is the difference between Sharecropping and Tenant Farming? Tenants are engaged in both sharecropping and tenant farming. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law.

Under a sharecropping system, landowners provided a share of land to be worked by the sharecropper, and usually provided other necessities such as housing, tools, seed, or working animals. In exchange for the land and supplies, the cropper would pay the owner a share of the crop at the end of the season, typically one-half to two-thirds. The cropper used his share to pay off their debt to the merchant.

A new system of credit, the crop lienbecame closely associated with sharecropping. Under this system, a planter or merchant extended a line of credit to the sharecropper while taking the year's crop as collateral. The sharecropper could then draw food and supplies all year long. When the crop was harvested, the planter or merchants who held the lien sold the harvest for the sharecropper and settled the debt.

Sociologist Jeffery M. Paige made a distinction between centralized sharecropping found on cotton plantations and the decentralized sharecropping with other crops. The former is characterized by long lasting tenure. Tenants are tied to the landlord through the plantation store. This form of tenure tends to be replaced by paid salaries as markets penetrate.

Decentralized sharecropping involves virtually no role for the landlord: plots are scattered, peasants manage their own labor and the landowners do not manufacture the crops. This form of tenure becomes more common when markets penetrate. Farmers who farmed land belonging to others but owned their own mule and plow were called tenant farmers ; they owed the landowner a smaller share of their crops, as the landowner did not have to provide them with as much in the way of shares cropping and tenant farming. Historically, sharecropping occurred extensively in ScotlandIreland and colonial Africa.

Use of the sharecropper system has also been identified in England as the practice of "farming to halves". In settler colonies of colonial 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, had African farmers to work the excess on a sharecropping basis.

In South Africa the Natives' Land Act [ 9 ] outlawed the ownership of land by Africans in areas designated for white ownership and effectively reduced the status of most sharecroppers to tenant farmers and then to farm laborers. In the s, generous subsidies to white farmers meant that most farmers could afford to work their entire farms, and sharecropping faded out.

The arrangement has reappeared in other African countries in modern times, including Ghana [ 10 ] and Zimbabwe. Economic historian Pius S. Nyambara argued that Eurocentric historiographical devices such as "feudalism" or "slavery" often qualified by weak prefixes like "semi-" or "quasi-" are not helpful in understanding the antecedents and functions of sharecropping in Africa.

Prior to the Civil War, sharecropping is known to have existed in Mississippi and is believed to have been in place in Tennessee. After the war, plantations and other lands throughout the South were seized by the federal government. In JanuaryGeneral William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. Many believed that this share cropping and tenant farming would be extended to all formerly enslaved people and their families as repayment for their treatment at the end of the war.

In the summer ofPresident Andrew Johnsonas one of the first acts of Reconstruction, instead ordered all land under federal control be returned to the owners from whom it had been seized. Southern landowners thus found themselves with a great deal of land but no liquid assets to pay for labor. They also maintained the "belief that gangs afforded the most efficient means of labor organization", something nearly all formerly enslaved people resisted.

Preferring "to organize themselves into kin groups", as well as "minimize chances for white male-black female contact by removing their female kin from work environments supervised closely by whites", black southerners were "determined to resist the old slave ways". A sharecropping system centered on cottona major cash cropdeveloped as a result.

Share cropping and tenant farming

Large plantations were subdivided into plots that could be worked by sharecroppers. Initially, sharecroppers in the American South were almost all formerly enslaved black people, but eventually cash-strapped indigent white farmers were integrated into the system. American sharecroppers worked a section of the plantation independently. In other areas it could be tobaccoriceor sugar.

At harvest time the crop was sold and the cropper received half of cash paid for the crop on his parcel. In the Reconstruction Era, sharecropping was one of few options for penniless freedmen to support themselves and their families. Other solutions included the crop-lien system where the farmer was extended credit for seed and other supplies by the merchanta rent labor system where the farmer rents the land but keeps their entire cropand the wage system worker earns a fixed wage but keeps none of their crop.

Sharecropping as historically practiced in the American South was more economically productive than the gang system plantations using enslaved workers, though less productive than modern agricultural techniques. Sharecropping continued to be a significant institution in many states for decades following the Civil War. By the early s, there were 5.