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In what is now northern Italy and southeastern France, the post [[Black Death]] population explosion of the late Middle Ages combined with the relative lack of free land made métayage an attractive system for both landowner and farmer. Once institutionalized, it continued long into the 18th Century although the base causes had been relieved by emigration to the [[New World]].
Métayage was used early in the [[Middle Ages]] in northern France and the [[Rhineland]]s, where burgeoning prosperity encouraged large-scale vineyard planting, similar to what the ancient Romans had accomplished utilizing slave labor. Called ''complant'', a laborer (fr [[Prendeur]]) would offer to plant and tend to an uncultivated parcel of land belonging to a land owner (fr. [[Bailleur]]). The ''prendeur'' would have ownership of the vines and the ''bailleur'' would receive anywhere from a third to two
In Italy and France, respectively, it was called ''mezzeria'' and ''métayage'', or halving -- the halving, that is, of the produce of the soil between landowner and land-holder. Halving didn't imply equal amounts of the produce but rather division according to agreement. The produce was divisible in certain definite proportions, which must obviously vary with the varying fertility of the soil and other circumstances and do in practice vary so much that the [[landlord]]'s share was sometimes as much as two-thirds, sometimes as little as one-third. Sometimes the landlord supplied all the stock, sometimes only part--the cattle and seed perhaps, while the farmer provided the implements; or perhaps only half the seed and half the cattle, the farmer finding the other halves. Thus the ''instrumentum fundi'' of [[Roman Law]] was combined within métayage.<ref>Crook, J.A. (1967) ''Law and Life of Rome: 90 B.C. to A.D. 212'' Cornell Univ. Press: Ithaca, NY. p. 158</ref> Taxes were also frequently divided, being paid wholly by one or the other, or jointly by both.
In the 18th Century métayage agreements began to give way to agreements to share profits from the sale of the crops and to straight tenant farming, although the practice in
In France there was also a system termed ''métayage par groupes'', which consisted
In France, since 1983, these métayage and similar farming contracts have been regulated by Livre IV of the Rural Code <ref>[http://admi.net/code/index-CRURALNL.html French Rural Code Livre IV ''Baux ruraux'']</ref>.
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