Editing Sharecropping (section)

{{Short description|Use of land by a tenant in return for a share of the crops produced}}
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[[File:Greene Co Ga1941 Delano.jpg|thumb|A [[Farm Security Administration]] photo of a cropper family chopping the weeds from cotton near [[White Plains, Georgia|White Plains]], in Georgia, US (1941)]]
{{Agriculture|land}}
'''Sharecropping''' is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with [[tenant farming]], providing the tenant a higher economic and social status.

Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. The [[France|French]] ''[[métayage]]'', the [[Catalonia|Catalan]] ''[[masoveria]]'', the [[Castile (historical region)|Castilian]] ''mediero'', the [[Slavs|Slavic]] ''połownictwo'' and ''izdolshchina, the [[Italy|Italian]] mezzadria'', and the [[Islamic economics|Islamic system]] of ''muzara‘a'' (المزارعة), are examples of legal systems that have supported sharecropping.