Tenant farmer
Historically, rural society utilised a three-tier structure of landowners (nobility, gentry, yeomanry), tenant farmers, and farmworkers.
[7] High rates of inheritance taxes in the postwar period led to the breakup or reduction of many large estates,[8] allowing many tenants to buy their holdings at favourable prices.
The landmark 1948 Act was enacted at a time when war-time food rationing was still in force and sought to encourage long-term investment by tenants by granting them lifetime security of tenure.
Under the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, security was extended to spouses and relatives of tenants for two successions, providing that they had been earning the majority of their income from the holding for five years.
Tenancies granted after 18 October 2006 over agricultural land used for a trade or business will fall within the limited protection of the 1995 Act so as to enjoy (provided the term is more than two years in length or there is a yearly tenancy) a mandatory minimum twelve months written notice to quit, including in respect of fixed terms.
There is for all tenancies within the scope of the Act a mandatory tenants' right to remove fixtures and buildings (section 8) together with compensation for improvements (Part III).
In the cycle of animal husbandry and land use and improvement, the long-term effect of the Farm Business Tenancy on the landscape of Britain is not yet proven.
It was predicted by landowners and other industry spokesmen that the 1995 Act would create opportunities for new tenants by allowing large areas of new lettings but this has not happened in practice as most landowners have continued to favour share farming or management agreements over formal tenancies and the majority of new lettings under the Act have been to existing farmers, often owner-occupiers taking on extra land at significantly higher rents than could be afforded by a traditional tenant.
Tenants often sub-rented small plots on a yearly basis from local farmers paying for them by labour service by a system, known as conacre, most without any lease or land rights.
[12][13] The abuse of tenant farmers led to widespread emigration to the United States and the colonies and was a key factor within the Home Rule Movement.
[22] The commission had acquired and supervised the transfer of up to 13 million acres (53,000 km2) of farmland between 1885 and 1920 where the freehold was assigned under mortgage to tenant farmers and farm workers.
[23] During the Meiji period, Japanese tenant farmers were traditionally cultivators rather than capitalistic or entrepreneurial venture by nature, paid in kind for their labors.
[26][27] A tenant farmer in Norway was known as a husmann (plural: husmenn) and were most common in the mid-19th century when they constituted around one-quarter of the country's population.
[28] The term torpare/torppari (Swedish/Finnish for crofter) refers to a slightly different type of tenant farmers, less secure than the inheritable usufruct right as åbo but sometimes with contracts as long as 50 years.
Population growth and landreforms (enskiftet) contributed to a 19th century increase of crofts but, particularly in Sweden, also to a shift from tenant farmers to farm laborers (statare) hired on yearlong contracts, paid in-kind.
The lives of torpare and statare were described by prominent Swedish and Finnish novelists and writers such as Ivar Lo-Johansson, Jan Fridegård, Väinö Linna (Under the North Star trilogy) and Moa Martinson.
A sharecropper is a farm tenant who pays rent with a portion (often half) of the crop he raises and who brings little to the operation besides his family labor; the landlord usually furnishing working stock, tools, fertilizer, housing, fuel, and seed, and often providing regular advice and oversight.
[32] In the Black Belt in the American South until the mid 20th century, the predominant agricultural system involved white land owners and African-American tenant farmers.
The landowners held all the political power, and fought vigorously against government welfare programs that would provide cash that would undermine the cashless system.
Economic historians Lee Alston and Joseph Ferrie (1999) describe the system as essentially an informal contract that: Tenant farmers often had agricultural managers who supervised their activities.
In 1907, for instance, J. H. Netterville began employment for the Panola Company, an agricultural business founded by William Mackenzie Davidson in the rich farming area of St. Joseph in Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana in the Mississippi River delta country.
Netterville became general manager of three highly profitable Panola properties, the Balmoral, Blackwater, and Wyoming plantations near Newellton, in which capacity he supervised 125 African-American tenant farming families, with little strife and great ease, according to reports from that period.
