In the late s, twenty-five percent of American farmers operated as tenants. By the late s, forty percent farmed as tenants. Today, almost all Arkansas farmers rent some of the land they cultivate. Modern tenant farmers tend to be corporate entities to take advantage of legal liability protection and other business and tax advantages.
The USDA recorded that, in , Arkansas farmers harvested their largest cotton and rice crops ever. Rice harvested reached a record high Thus does tenant farming survive, in modified form, in Arkansas. For additional information: Grubbs, Donald H.
McNeilly, Donald P. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, Whayne, Jeannie M. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, Honor or memorial gifts are an everlasting way to pay tribute to someone who has touched your life.
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Read our Privacy Policy. The first time you log in to our catalog you will need to create an account. Creating an account gives you access to all these features. Go Back. Get Involved. By there were 1,, tenant farmers in the South.
What began as a device to get former slaves back to work became a pernicious system that entrapped white as well as black farmers. After the number of white tenant farmers grew alarmingly. By nearly half of white farmers and 77 percent of black farmers in the country were landless. As farm tenancy grew, a tenancy ladder evolved. From the bottom rung, the hapless sharecropper could climb to share tenant if he could accumulate enough of his own equipment and money.
Share tenants kept two-thirds or three-fourths of the crop, depending on how much they could furnish. If a share tenant progressed to a point of needing nothing but the land, he could become a cash tenant by paying a fixed rental. Cash tenants kept all of the proceeds from the crop. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of farmers fell down the tenancy ladder rather than moving up it.
Some farmers lost their farms or their status as cash or share tenants because of crop failures, low cotton prices, laziness, ill health, poor management, exhaustion of the soil, excessive interest rates, or inability to compete with tenant labor.
Many tricks of nature drought, flood, insects, frost, hail, high winds, and plant diseases could ruin a crop. Sharecropping and tenancy remained accepted as a normal part of southern life until the Great Depression. Then the realization took hold that the tenancy system desperately needed reform. However, the early New Deal's agricultural programs brought no change. Based on drastic acreage reduction and benefit payments that went mostly to landowners, in actuality the programs were a disaster for tenants and sharecroppers.
When planters and landlords reduced their acreage in production by 40 or 50 percent, they reduced their tenants by the same amount.
Although there are similarities, the story of tenancy in Oklahoma does not fit the pattern of southern farm tenancy. The differences are dictated by the unusual history of the white settlement of Oklahoma. By the American agricultural frontier was ending. Indian Territory offered about the last frontier for good farmland.
Indian rule prohibited white land ownership. Bush: U. Reading Primary Sources: an introduction for students Appendix B. Wills and inventories: a process guide Appendix C. Who created this source, and what do I know about her, him, or them? When was the source produced? Where was the source produced?
Contextualize the Source What do I know about the historical context of this source? What do I know about how the creator of this source fits into that historical context? Why did the person who created the source do so? Explore the Source What factual information is conveyed in this source? What opinions are related in this source?
What is implied or conveyed unintentionally in the source? In addition to this, sharecroppers had to share their large portion of crop produced until the debt is paid to the owner, so they make less profit from farming. 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. For instance: if the farmers took a plot to plant cotton in the rented plot, his earning would be based on how much he would produce or how he sold the crops and only he has to pay rent or some part of his crop produced so, he is able to make more profit.
Also, the sharecroppers have no right to decide what to produce, how to harvest, and the way of selling. The owner themselves sold the crop produced and gave the farmers a small portion of earning. On the other hand, the tenant farmers have the right to decide what crop to produce, how to manage crops, and how to sell.
This gives farmers more control over the crop sale increasing their chances of getting more profit. The differences between sharecroppers and tenant farmers can be summarized in the table as:.
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