Rice fields in Madagascar. Georgia Popplewell/flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Despite being formally illegal since the 1970s, sharecropping is one of the more common working agreements between landowners and their labourers in the highlands of Madagascar. Sharecropping agreements are often represented as a sort of win-win game by both landowners and tenants, particularly for rice cultivation, the main agricultural sector of the island. They have allowed otherwise landless families to install themselves in fertile regions for anywhere from a few years to several generations while keeping two-thirds of the production for themselves. At the same time, landowners, without moving a finger, obtain rice to satisfy domestic consumption or to resell, prevent others from illegally occupying their land, and maintain a strong emotional and economic link to the land of their ancestors (tanindrazana) and their family tombs, a crucial benefit if they have moved to urban areas.
Tenants must maintain the fields and provide their own fertiliser. They may occupy the local house of the landowners at no cost, and in the intercropping period plant crops other than rice. These help the land to regain its fertility and can provide sustenance or additional income for the family. In regions where labour is scarce and the landowners have other, more important sources of revenue – such as a position in the government or a flourishing trade activity – tenants furthermore can be relatively confident that they will not being evicted in the long run and that the landowners will look the other way if they keep slightly more than their share of the harvest.
