What Is 'Share Cropping'?

It's a form of agricultural tenure.  The land owner allows someone else to farm the land, in return for a share of the crop.

The contractual conditions governing this arrangement can vary a lot.  In some cases tradition rather than law may determine how the profits of the crop are divided.

Typically, though, share cropping is seen as exploitive of the people actually working the land.    For instance, the land owner might sell materials, including seeds, to the cropper at an unfair non-market rate.  The cropper might have no choice if he wanted to work that piece of land, and land owners might collude within the larger region to keep the prices of materials sold to tenants quite high.  Ultimately, the share cropper would have to sell most of his crop to pay back the initial debts and thereby never achieve any year on year gains.

Share cropping was once very common in the American South, where the land workers were mostly descendents of ex-slaves.  Share-cropping is still quite common in parts of the developing world today.