Sharecropping and conversion to lease (part two)

It was not until the advent of the Agrarian Law (l. 230/82) that the real breakthrough came regarding the prohibition of agrarian association contracts.

In addition to reiterating the ban on sharecropping contracts (Art. 45 l. 203/82), the new law provided for the possibility of converting associative contracts into agrarian leases (Art. 25 l. 203/82).

For our part, Article 25 of the Agrarian Law provided for the conversion–within four years of the law’s enactment–of existing sharecropping contracts upon the request made by one of the parties to the contract. As with the notice of termination of an agricultural lease, the request for conversion had to be sent–to the other party–by registered letter with return receipt at least six months before the end of the current crop year.

In the event of failure to convert within the four-year term mentioned above, the subsequent Article 34 enshrined the duration of unconverted association contracts, specifying that the computation of the term would begin at the end of the 1982/1983 crop year, i.e., November 11, 1983.

Case law has repeatedly clarified that the manifestation of the sharecropper’s willingness to transform the relationship into a tenancy could not be implicitly brought about through the constant payment of sums by way of rent. With this it was, therefore, definitively reaffirmed the necessity and non-derogation of explicit and formal communication under Art. 25 l. 203/82 by sending a registered letter with return receipt (for all see Cass. civ., Sec. lav., Nov. 5, 2009 no. 23446). In the absence of such notice, the duration of the sharecropping contract would have been regulated by Art. 34 l. 203/82.

Given the provision of the non-applicability of the tacit conversion of sharecropping contract to lease contract and the prohibition of entering into new association contracts in the absence of the notice referred to in Art. 25, the sharecropping contract would have been concluded within the terms of the law without any burden of termination on the part of the grantor, who would therefore have been able to take action for a declaration that the contract had been terminated (see Civil Cassation April 13, 2007 No. 8834; Civil Cassation, March 16, 2005 No. 5689).

Failure to release the homestead, held under a sharecropping contract, at the end of the last crop year would, therefore, have turned into detention sine titulo and would have resulted in the original sharecropper-as has happened in several cases-being obliged to compensate the grantor owner, pursuant to Art. 2043 Civil Code, for damages suffered by the same for the lack of enjoyment of the fund (see Trib. Benevento, June 25, 2009).

Attorney Chiara Roncarolo

Attorney Maurizio Randazzo