Sharefarming is an umbrella term for various systems of farming in which sharefarmers make use of agricultural assets they do not own in return for a percentage share of the profits, whether this be in currency or in kind.
Sharecropping as historically practiced in the USA during the Reconstruction era (late 19th-century) is one of many implementations of sharefarming; another, known as métayage or mezzadria, was, and remains, practiced in southern France, in Italy, and in Canada. The meaning of the latter term shifted over the centuries from one in which farmers share in the crops they harvest to one in which they share in the profits from their sale. (The landlords of a so-called métairie were known as bailleurs or concedenti and the sharecroppers as prendeurs or mezzadri.)
Métayage of the older sort, re-christened as colonat partiaire, was practiced in Africa and in the overseas departments of France until modern times; its last vestiges vanished from Réunion in 2006. On the other hand, métayage as it is defined today remains one of the options for running a farm and is given a legal backbone in the Code rural, livre IV, as well as in several laws of the European Union.[1][2][3]
Occasionally, the term sharefarmer is used to denote a farmer who receives a wage (fixed per hour, week, month, or area) from the landlord, although such a person is normally considered a tenant farmer or farm labourer. Two common implementations of the sharefarming concept are sharecropping and sharemilking, although it has been applied to other sorts of agricultural assets.
Sharefarming was common[when?] in colonial Africa, in Scotland, and in Ireland; it came into wide use in the United States during its post-bellum Reconstruction Era. In Europe, especially France and Italy, a sharefarming system called metayage once commonly occurred.
While sharefarming as practiced in many poor parts of the world can be seen as a form of oppression similar to feudal serfdom, it is not inherently exploitative. Métayage, under its modern-day meaning, remains common in Canada, and in fact compares very favourably to other farming arrangements on the basis of taxation. Sharefarming in the broad sense finds good use where individual farmers prefer not to have complete responsibility for agricultural assets such as the land or livestock, and in such applications it is not considered exploitative.