Sharecropping

= __**What is sharecropping?**__ = Sharecrooping is a system of agriculture where a landowner allows a tenant to to use the land in return for 50% of the crops grown on the land. Sharecropping solves the harvest rush problem. Since croppers pay in share of their harvest, owners and croppers share a risk of the harvest being big or small, and the prices being high or low. Because tenants will benefit from a larger harvest, they will work harder and invest in better methods than in a slave plantation system. However, by dividing the work force into many individual workers, larger farms no longer benefit from economies of scale. Sharecropping was never efficent as the gang agricultre of slave plantations. =__Transition from slave to Sharecropping__= Sharecropping soon became a new form of slavery. Without land of their own, many blacks were forced to sharecrop, they blacks would profit from the crops grown. They would get all the supplies for a store, and at the end of the year, the blacks trading food for money, would pay the whit owners back. When accounting time came, the black farmer was always a few dollars short of what he owed the landowner, so they began the new year owing more money then the year before.



[] [] = Where did sharecropping start = === **Sharecropping began in the US Southern Staes after the plantation system was destroyed in the Civil War.The White Southern land owners hired new freed slaves to prepare the land and grow crops in return for a place to live. Usually an old worn out shack and almost half of the crop's earnings. Of course it never worked out. Sharecropping was an easier way of slavery.** ===

=== Sharecropping started in the 1860-1870's. After the Civil War alot of new slaves became sharecroppers. It took place in most of the sothern stateses. After the civil war, alot of former slaves became sharecroppers. But the practice had existed for hundreds of years. Sharecroping lasted about 10 to 15 years and ended in the late 1880's. Sharecropping mostly took place on farms. ===