The classical system of sharefarming by which a landowner provided both fixed and working capital for his tenants’ farming operations in return for a proportion (normally half) of the crops, was widespread in France and Italy until well into the twentieth century. The French métayage arrangements, whereby inputs and outputs were shared by landowner and peasant, had the particular virtue of spreading some of the risks and uncertainties of farming between the parties. It was argued, however, that métayage blurred the distinction between landowner and peasantry, with English writers like Arthur Young strenuously arguing that the arrangement was a potent disincentive to agrarian improvement, and later Marxist analysts seeing it as a cause, if not a consequence, of rural poverty. Until recently British historians of agriculture, while they might have been aware of its existence, have accorded little consequence to sharefarming in the context of the broad vista of agricultural development. Within the socially divisive eternal rural triangle of landlord-tenant-labourer there was little room for ‘farming by halves’, as English farmers surged triumphantly from strength to strength, from the seventeenth century to present times.
But, as Griffiths and Overton show, nothing could be further from the truth. Burrowing their way through a wide range of primary and secondary sources, assiduously analysing the pages of diaries and farm and estate accounts, and interviewing farmers and landowners, they reveal that, from medieval times, sharefarming, in one guise or another, has played a vital role in rural life. Through output sharing, corn rents, live and dead stock leasing, contract arrangements and a bewildering variety of other practices, ‘farming by halves’ allowed for strategies to share costs and benefits and to minimise risks, more especially when economic circumstances were uncertain. Capital intensive farming under the classic landlord/tenant system may have predominated in England, but, as the authors convincingly demonstrate, less formal arrangements existed throughout much of the country and across several centuries. Although landowners tended increasingly to withdraw from active participation in farming in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sharefarming remains apparent both on larger estates and, by way of subletting arrangements and livestock leasing, between tenants themselves. Based extensively on confidentiality and trust, the endlessly variable systems provided opportunities for those without access to capital to gain a foothold on the farming ladder and thus on the road to social advancement. By leasing a herd of cows and marshalling his wife and daughters to work in the dairy, Hodge might eventually move from the back benches of the village church and cast off his smock as he changed into broadcloth to grace the pew behind the squire.
Central to Griffiths and Overton's argument is the point that agricultural historians need to be aware of the persistence of sharefarming arrangements in England, to be able to identify such arrangements in manuscript material and, where appropriate, to reassess landlord/tenant relations accordingly. This was particularly significant in the later nineteenth century as the landed interest came under increasing social and economic pressure and the countryside sunk into depression. Throughout this, and the inter-war period, farmers and landowners resorted to all manner of collaborative schemes to stave off economic disaster, and diaries, estate papers and newspaper advertisements reveal that sharefarming in one form or another was an important component of their respective armouries. As they review twentieth and early twenty-first century developments in tenurial and fiscal issues, the authors show that, if anything, sharefarming is of growing significance in the changing English countryside. With increasing pressure on incomes and the continuing need for tax efficiency, a willingness to cooperate, collaborate and engage in a whole range of joint ventures becomes the more compelling. Whether it be via partnerships, contract farming, machinery sharing, or one or other variation on the classic system whereby partners share an agreed proportion of expenses and distribute an agreed share of the income, unconventional tenancies are becoming more common.
While this book succeeds in awakening our awareness of the sharefarming issue, which, incidentally it could have done in half the number of pages, there is a good deal that it does not tell us. What, for example, are the implications of expanding sharefarming systems for both the natural and social environment of the countryside? How far are contemporary sharefarming arrangements consistent with the much-vaunted concept of sustainability? What are its implications for the overall net efficiency of English agriculture at a time when, at last, the blinkers have been removed from official eyes and government is waking up to the absolute necessity for the production of the maximum amount of food from our own resources? These issues are worthy of the attention of agricultural economists, if such creatures still exist. In the meantime Griffiths and Overton have done a worthy job, although their proof readers have occasionally been careless. Surely, in a book costing more than night's rest and a full English breakfast in a decent seaside billet, one should not expect to encounter such curiosities as ‘enter-ing’ or to ponder over the arresting notion of ‘historians of English history’?
