Mezzadria

Sharecropping is a so-called “partnership” contract by which a landowner grants tenancy of his or her land, including land and farm buildings, to a farmer (so-called sharecropper), with whom he or she shares–usually to the extent of 50 percent each–the products and profits of the farm itself. It should be pointed out that the term sharecropper in most cases does not have a narrow meaning limited to the identification of a single person, but has a broader meaning, so as to include the entire farming family (so-called farm family), the labor force essential to the smooth operation of the farm.

This form of business reality that saw its origins in the Medieval Era as an expression of the feudal system and spread widely throughout much of Europe. However, in the aforementioned period, on most occasions, the distribution of crops and profits was made to the greater advantage of the granting party and, therefore, at a percentage far different from parity. As the centuries passed, this type of tenure and farm management became increasingly distant from more modern production needs and, therefore, classified as less and less profitable and severely penalizing for the farming family.

In order to remedy this situation and to encourage a more efficient type of production and aimed, as well, at the recovery of large areas that are insufficiently exploited, by Law No. 15 of September 1964. 765, the Legislature, with foresight, despite the time it took to come to such a legislative change, sanctioned the prohibition of entering into new sharecropping contracts. Sharecropping contracts no longer, long ago, corresponded to the needs of the time.

This initial regulatory innovation, the incipit of a wide-ranging reform project, was reinforced and made more effective with the introduction of the well-known Agrarian Law (Law no. 203) by which it was provided for the conversion into an agrarian lease contract of all associative agrarian contracts that, on the date of the law’s entry into force, were still in force, and this at the request of the concessionaire himself, who could thus, by May 6, 1986, replace by unilateral decision the old sharecropping contract with a lease contract, that is, by means of the sole modification of the current contract and without the need to proceed to the conclusion of a new one.

However, in order to ensure the transition to an agricultural business concept based on more modern and profitable forms of tenure, the legislature provided that in the event that it was not possible to precede the conversion or the conversion was not requested within the aforementioned deadline, the sharecropping contracts still in existence would in any case end on November 10, 1993.

Following the aforementioned regulatory change, there was no shortage of questions of constitutional legitimacy on Articles 25, 28 and 30 of the Law May 3, 1982, no. 203, placed in relation to Articles 3, 4, 41, 42 and 43 of the Constitution: “(a) because of the unequal treatment of the grantor and the grantee of the enjoyment of the land as to how to cause the conversion of the sharecropping relationship into a lease; (b) because, pursuant to Art. 41 const. freedom of economic initiative cannot be compressed to the point of being annulled without realizing that social utility, in the presence of which the said freedom can be sacrificed; (c) because the limitation on private initiative ends up affecting the content of private property in that the owner becomes totally conditioned in his powers of enjoyment, so that he loses all incentive for productive investment; (d) for violation of Articles 4 and 43 of the Constitution, in that the owner with the successful conversion is deprived without any compensation of his right to the enterprise; (e) for violation again Of Art. 3 const., in that the grantors of the most productive sharecroppers are affected, while the economically weaker sharecroppers remain in existence” (App. Bologna, May 21, 1983).

It was the Constitutional Court itself that definitively settled every issue on the point, thus confirming the goodness and foresight of the legislature’s change of views, sanctioning that the questions of constitutionality raised were – and are – unfounded with reference to the aforementioned articles 3, 4, 41, 42 and 44 Const. in that the articles 25, 26, 28 and 30 of the Lege Agraria “provide for the so-called ‘automatic’ conversion of sharecropping into tenancy (i.e., implementable through the mere exercise of the sharecropper’s right), which is hypothesized to be detrimental to the grantor’s rights not to be treated in a manner detrimental to his negotiating counterpart, his right to work, as well as his rights to economic initiative and property” (Constitutional Court Ord., 27-06-1986, no. 163).

In the same judgment, the only exception was the declaration of unconstitutionality of Articles 30 (in its entirety) and 25 (part) of Law 203/82, always ruling out, however, that the institution of conversion violated, per se, any of the cited constitutional parameters.

Attorney Chiara Roncarolo

Attorney Maurizio Randazzo