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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 , whereby the rent is paid annually in banknotes. A farm operating under métayage was known as a métairie, the origin of some place names in areas where the system was used, such as Metairie, Louisiana.
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 , 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.Hugh Johnson, Vintage: The Story of Wine pg 116. Simon and Schuster 1989 This system was used extensively in planting the Champagne region. Excerpts from R. Dion’s “ Histoire de la Vigne et du Vin en France“ Bailleur was also used as the name for the proprietor under métayage. The contract still exists today in Switzerland. agrivalais.ch: "Contrat de métayage dans la vigne"
In the eighteenth century of leased lands in western, southern and central France were sharecropped. North of the Loire it was only common in Lorraine.Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, T J Byres, page 18
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.Crook, J.A. (1967) Law and Life of Rome: 90 B.C. to A.D. 212 Cornell Univ. Press: Ithaca, NY. p. 158 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.Shaffer, John W. (1982) Family and Farm: Agrarian Change and Household Organization in the Loire Valley, 1500-1900 State University of New York Press: Albany. By 1929, there were still 200,000 Métayers, farming 11% of French cultivated land (same % in 1892). It was most common in Landes forest and Allier (72% and 49% respectively).Land Tenure and Political Tendency in Rural France: The Case of Sharecropping, S Sokoloff, European Studies Review, 1980, page 361 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, "Le colonat partiaire" Clicanoo, Journal de l'Ile de la Réunion 15 May 2006 ; until 2006 when it was abolished. Art. L. 462-28, French National Assembly, Law No 2006-11 of January 5 2006 Journal officiel de la République Française of January 6, 2006;
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. French Rural Code Livre IV Baux ruraux
The term métayage is also applied to modern-day flexible cash leases at least in the nominally common law Canadian province of Ontario, Flexible Cash Lease Agreements/Contrats de métayage portant sur les cultures, Factsheet 812 (2001) Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Ontario accessed at [12][13] with English version at [14][15] June 20, 2006 and in 2006 in all of Canada, 13,030 farms occupying 2,316,566ha were counted by Statistics Canada. statcan.gc.ca: "Mode d'occupation, 2006: Tableau 4.5-5 - Mode d'occupation déclaré des terres possédées, louées, en métayage ou utilisées sous d'autres arrangements - Superficie en métayage, année de recensement 2006" The same study of metayage found 2,489 farms covering 130,873ha in Ontario. The system was useful in Quebec for most agricultural properties at least as far back as the year 1800, biographi.ca: "DCB entry for ANTROBUS, JOHN" and is still tracked statistically by value in Quebec as "loyer en espèces et à la part (agriculture)". bdso.gouv.qc.ca: "Databank of Official Statistics on Québec - Definitions" It appears to benefit from favourable tax treatment in Canada, "Énoncé de politique sur la TPS/TVH - Metayage" (P-253) 13 Jan 2009 where it is known as "sharecropping". cra-arc.gc.ca: "Revenus de location 2013" T4036(F) Rév. 13 In forestry metayage is the subject of a Government of Canada infosheet, nrcan.gc.ca: "La ferme forestière en métayage. 2004. Masse, S. Ressources naturelles Canada, Service canadien des forêts, Centre de foresterie des Laurentides, Québec, QC. L’éclaircie No. 11. 2 p." and socio-economic report, "La viabilité socio-économique de la ferme forestière en métayage" (Masse, S: Service canadien des forêts, Centre de foresterie des Laurentides, Natural Resources Canada) and has been the subject in Quebec of recent scholarly research. ulaval.ca: "Des fermes forestières en métayage sur le territoire public québécois. Vers un outil d'évaluation pour les communautés" (Roy, ME: MSc thesis, 2006)
In 1600, the landlord Olivier de Serres wrote 'Le théâtre de l'agriculture' which recommends Métayage as cash tenants took all the risks so would demand lower rent while hired labour was expensive to manage.The Economic Theory of Sharecropping in Early Modern France, Philip Hoffman, The Journal of Economic History 1984, page 312 Simonde de Sismondi expressed dissatisfaction in 1819 with the institution of métayage because it reinforced the poverty of the peasants and prevented any social or cultural development.de Sismondi, Simonde (1819) Nouveaux principes d'economie politique, ou de la Richesse dans ses rapports avec la population translated as New Principles of Political Economy of Wealth in Its Relation to Population by Richard Hyse, Transaction Publishers: London (1991).
Although métayage and extreme rural poverty usually coincided, there were provinces in France and Italy (especially on the plains of Lombardy) where the contrary was the case.
Criticism
British writers were unanimous in condemning the métayage system, until John Stuart Mill adopted a different tone. They judged it by its appearance in France, where under the ancien régime all direct were paid by the métayer with the noble landowner being exempt. With the taxes being assessed according to the visible produce of the soil, they operated as penalties upon productiveness. Under this system, a métayer could fancy that his interest lay less in exerting himself to augment the total share to be divided between himself and his landlord and instead be encouraged to defraud the latter part of his rightful share. This was partly due to the métayer's relative state of destitution and with the fixed duration of his tenure – without which the metayage could not prosper. French metayers, in Arthur Young's time, were "removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of their landlords," and so in general they so remained.Cruveilhier, J. (1894) Étude sur le métayage Paris.
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