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Difference Between Sharecroppers and Tenant Farmers Unlike sharecroppers, tenant farmers make more profit from crop production as they only need to pay rent for what they took and have full control over their production.
What was sharecropping and why was it so bad?
Contracts between landowners and sharecroppers were typically harsh and restrictive. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from saving cotton seeds from their harvest, forcing them to increase their debt by obtaining seeds from the landowner. Landowners also charged extremely high interest rates.
Ultimately, sharecropping emerged as a sort of compromise. The high interest rates landlords and sharecroppers charged for goods bought on credit (sometimes as high as 70 percent a year) transformed sharecropping into a system of economic dependency and poverty.
Why sharecropping created a cycle of debt for farmers?
The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next.
In addition, while sharecropping gave African Americans autonomy in their daily work and social lives, and freed them from the gang-labor system that had dominated during the slavery era, it often resulted in sharecroppers owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and other supplies, for example) than they were …
Was tenant farming successful?
Tenant farmers frequently found themselves in debt to the landowner. However some tenant farmers proved successful and ultimately moved off rented lands to purchase their own tracts. Generally, however, this was not the case and the system, along with sharecropping, proved to be a failure.
The requirement of little or no up-front cash for land purchase provided the major advantage for farmers in the sharecropping arrangement. The lack of the initial up-front payment, however, also created disadvantages for the landowner who waited for payment until crops were harvested and then sold.
Why was sharecropping better than slavery?
By the early 1870s, the system known as sharecropping had come to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South. Under this system, Black families would rent small plots of land, or shares, to work themselves; in return, they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner at the end of the year.