Metayage

The metayage system is the cultivation of land for a proprietor by one who receives a proportion of the produce, as a kind of sharecropping. Another class of land tenancy in France is named fermage , whereby the rent is paid annually in banknotes. The metayage system is the cultivation of land for a proprietor by one who receives a proportion of the produce, as a kind of sharecropping. Another class of land tenancy in France is named fermage , whereby the rent is paid annually in banknotes. Métayage was available under Roman law, although it was not in widespread use. It proved useful after the emancipation of Roman slaves as the newly freed peasants had no land or cash (the same phenomenon happened in Brazil and the USA when slavery was banned). In what is now northern Italy and southeastern France, the post Black Death population explosion of the late Middle Ages, combined with the relative lack of free land, made métayage an attractive system for both landowner and farmer. Once institutionalized, it continued into the 18th Century, although the base causes had been relieved by emigration to the New World.. Métayage was used early in the Middle Ages in northern France and the Rhinelands, where burgeoning prosperity encouraged large-scale vineyard planting, similar to what the ancient Romans had accomplished using slave labor. The hyperinflation that followed the influx of Incan-American gold made Métayage preferable to cash tenancy and wage labour for both parties. Called complant, a laborer (in French prendeur, in Italian mezzadro) would offer to plant and tend to an uncultivated parcel of land belonging to a land owner (in French bailleur, in Italian concedente). The prendeur would have ownership of the vines and the bailleur would receive anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the vines' production in exchange for the use of his soil. This system was used extensively in planting the Champagne region. Bailleur was also used as the name for the proprietor under métayage. The contract still exists today in Switzerland. In the eighteenth century c. 75% of leased lands in western, southern and central France were sharecropped. North of the Loire it was only common in Lorraine. In Italy and France, respectively, it was called mezzadria and métayage, or halving - the halving, that is, of the produce of the soil between landowner and land-holder. Halving didn't imply equal amounts of the produce but rather division according to agreement. The produce was divisible in certain definite proportions, which obviously must have varied with the varying fertility of the soil and other circumstances and did in practice vary so much that the landlord's share was sometimes as much as two-thirds, sometimes as little as one-third. Sometimes the landlord supplied all the stock, sometimes only part - the cattle and seed perhaps, while the farmer provided the implements; or perhaps only half the seed and half the cattle, the farmer finding the other halves. Thus the instrumentum fundi of Roman Law was combined within métayage. Taxes were also frequently divided, being paid wholly by one or the other, or jointly by both. In the 18th Century, métayage agreements began to give way to agreements to share profits from the sale of the crops and to straight tenant farming, although the practice in its original form could still be found in isolated communities until the early 20th Century. By 1929, there were still 200,000 Métayers, farming 11% of French cultivated land (same % in 1892). It was most common in Landes and Allier (72% and 49% respectively). As the métayage practice changed, the term colonat partiaire began to be applied to the old practice of sharing-out the actual crop, while métayage was used for the sharing-out of the proceeds from the sale of the crops. Colonat partiaire was still practised in the French overseas departments, notably Réunion, until 2006 when it was abolished. In France, there was also a system termed métayage par groupes, which consisted of letting a sizeable farm not to one métayer but to an association of several who would work together for the general good under the supervision of either the landlord or his bailiff. This arrangement got past the difficulty of finding tenants having sufficient capital and labour to run the larger farms. In France, since 1983, these métayage and similar farming contracts have been regulated by Livre IV of the Rural Code.