Meaning & use

tenant farming

noun·Academic

A system in which a farmer rents land from a landowner and pays rent in cash or a share of the crop.

See it in a sentence

After losing their own land, the family survived through tenant farming for two generations.

Tenant farming was widespread across the American South after the Civil War.

A note on using this word

Tenant farming is closely related to sharecropping, though sharecroppers typically pay rent with a share of the harvest rather than cash.

Words with a similar meaning

sharecropping

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

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