TENANT Farming on Share Basis Usually Best for Beginners

Tenant farming offers one of the few remaining opportunities to work for oneself without investing a large amount of capital. The opportunity is open even to those whose only assets are ability and willingness to do farm work. But an inexperienced farmer who must go unknown and unrecommended to landlords is likely to obtain only a farm on which the chances of profit are small.

Parents may be in a position to rent land to a son or be of help in leasing land from others. If the opportunity they can furnish or procure offers a reasonable chance to get a living, the young man is likely to accept it in order to make a beginning. If the opportunity proves to be a poor one he may later, when better known and experienced, bargain successfully with other landlords for better farms. Nearly half of the tenant farmers of the United States get their first experience in farming for themselves on land leased from relatives.

An enterprising boy will want to do some farming for himself. A boy who earns his spending money out of enterprises which he considers his own, and which he is encouraged to expand out of earnings, develops in thrift and judgment more than a boy who is paid wages, or given spending money, without a chance to invest in something related to his daily life.

In starting to farm it is almost always best to do so as a share tenant. Experience is an asset in any calling and it is something that often costs a great deal to gain. On shares a farmer gains experience without bearing the entire cost, and the landlord’s share interest invites his cooperation and supervision.

Beginners as tenant farmers are usually farm reared, newly married, and concerned in setting up new homes on the farms they have leased.  To such a man the possibility of starting as a tenant is often contingent on the sacrifice of desired standards of living. This may be partly avoided by leasing on terms which throw the burden of furnishing the operating capital and farming expense upon the landlord.

The most extensive opportunity for a family without property to farm with something of tenant status exists in the South where, in 1925, more than a fifth of the farmers owned neither their land nor their work animals. These are the croppers; in number they approximate 279,000 white and 344,000 colored families. The majority of croppers in the South may be described as married laborers without capital of their own, hired to raise a cotton crop for a half share interest instead of wages. That they and their families may live while making the crop they commonly procure advances secured by their share interest in the crop. Each cropper is alloted a house in which his family may live by itself, a plot for gardening, and may keep a cow, hogs, and poultry. Each cropper family usually works by itself on land allotted to it and is not constantly under an overseer as would be the case if it were hired for wages.

To compete successfully in the North a prospective farm tenant must, in general, own the necessary work animals and implements.  Occasionally a retiring farmer does not care to clear his farm of horses and implements and rent in the usual way. Promising young men of the neighborhood who have been doing farm work for wages often have the best chance of getting such farms as tenants. A third of the income has usually been considered adequate for furnishing the labor on a good general farm in the North—terms on which most northern tenants are unwilling to compete because they have their own work animals and implements.

A statement of the amount of money it takes to start as a tenant would need much qualification. Some men, even though their contracts require them to furnish the work animals and implements, begin with practically nothing. This they may do through agreements giving them the use of animals or implements in exchange for feed breeding, or care. Another way is to employ poor work animals and implements which other farmers are willing to give away or sell very cheaply. Handy persons willing to use time and sacrifice convenience can get along on surprisingly little.

Most farm tenants have good opportunities to increase their incomes and improve their status by adding to their capital. The advantages of increased capital are such that many tenants and their families use every opportunity to better their asset position. The whole adult family can help 1n this when it lives on a farm. The work to be done affords tasks for every able and willing person. The work affords exercise and training to those who do it, increases the family income, and reduces the expenditures for food and hired labor.