sharecropping

verb (used with or without object), share·cropped, share·crop·ping.

1. to farm as a sharecropper.

verb -crops, -cropping or -cropped

1. mainly US to cultivate (farmland) as a sharecropper

A system of farming that developed in the South after the Civil War, when landowners, many of whom had formerly held slaves, lacked the cash to pay wages to farm laborers, many of whom were former slaves. The system called for dividing the crop into three shares — one for the landowner, one for the worker, and one for whoever provided seeds, fertilizer, and farm equipment.