Thursday, August 6, 2009

Bava Metzia 103 - Field Leases (Finds)

There are two arrangements under which fields are leased: sharecropping and tenant farming. A sharecropper pays the owner of the land a fixed percentage of the crops, for example, a half, third, or quarter, and keeps the rest. The tenant farmer pays a fixed amount, usually using the field’s produce, but if it’s not enough, he buys from the market.

If one leases a field from his fellow and they did not agree on the way of cultivating the field, such as cutting or uprooting the crop or whether to plow afterward, they should follow the local custom.

Just as they divide the wine, so they divide the branches and the canes - in the same proportion, and this applies only to sharecropping.

Art: In the Wheat Field b Wlodzimierz Tetmajer

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