The first meaning of sharecropping that appears in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) refers to agreement established by those who share a farm. The idea of farming, meanwhile, refers to the activity that is developed to make a profit or to profit in itself derived from a task or something else.
Returning to the concept of sharecropping, it is usually linked to associative agreement that establish the owner of a land Y who is in charge of cultivating it in order to share the results. The sharecropping contract is signed by the owner (the transferor sharecropper) and the one who works the land (the assignee sharecropper), causing the lessee to give up the exploitation of the farm in exchange for a percentage of the profits.
Many times the sharecropping contract includes an annex that grants the sharecropping assignee the right of residing in a property which is located on the same farm. In this way, whoever exploits the land lives on the same property.
Throughout the story, Sharecropping was more frequent in regions where, for various reasons, the direct exploitation of the land was not very profitable. Thus, the large landowner found a mechanism to divide his land into different exploitation units, sharing the risk with the one who was in charge of the exploitation and who needed profitability.
Sharecropping occurred frequently in countries Europeans like Spain, Italy Y Greece and later it reached the American continent, expanding in Paraguay, Argentina and other nations. The scope of this figure is defined in each legislation.
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