What is "sharefarming"

Sharefarming is a system of farming in which sharefarmers make use of agricultural assets they do not own in return for some percentage of the profits. Sometimes the sharefarmer will receive a wage from the owner instead, although such a person is normally considered a tenant farmer or farm labourer. Two common implementations of the sharefarming concept are sharecropping and sharemilking, although it is applied to other sorts of agricultural assets.

Sharefarming was common in colonial Africa, in Scotland, and in Ireland; it came into wide use in the United States during the Reconstruction era (late 19th-century). In Europe, especially France and Italy, a sharefarming system called metayage once commonly occurred.

While sharefarming can be seen as a form of oppression similar to feudal serfdom and is in practice in many poor areas today, such as India, it is also common in highly developed countries. The latter case occurs where individual farmers prefer not to have complete responsibility for agricultural assets such as the land or livestock, and in such applications it is not considered exploitative.