VINES AND SHARECROPPING: THE CASE OF CATALUNA, 1700s-1930s1

Although sharecropping was found until recently throughout the Mediterranean region, the contract is usually considered as having been inefficient or as a response to some form of market failure, and is rarely seen as an institution favourable to agrarian development. In Cataluna from the late 17th century, however, sharecropping played a major role in establishing a dynamic agriculture in one of Europe's earliest industrializing regions. Rising export demand for spirits and wines led landowners to enter into indefinite sharecropping contracts (rabassa morta), bringing into production previously uncultivated scrub land. What perhaps is surprising is that sharecropping remained in operation for so long, lasting until well into the 20th century. In this paper we first examine the reasons for the long run success of the institution until the late 19th century. From the turn of the 20th century the region's viticulture began to lose competitiveness, and in the last section we attempt to explain why the contract was less successful that it had been previously. Two major arguments appear relevant, namely the changing nature of viticulture as it became more capital intensive, and the breakdown in trust between landowner and cropper. SHARECROPPING AND VITICULTURE Problems of monitoring and moral hazard help explain why sharecropping contracts were frequent, especially in viticulture, in the Mediterranean region. Typical of many agricultural activities, was the difficulty landowners had in determining between the effects of variations in the climate and those of labor inputs, on the quantity and quality of the grapes produced (Bardhan 1984:161;Galassi 1992:82). Until the present century, there were few econo-mies of scale in wine production, which made it unprofitable for landowners 1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the universities of Leicester (at the congress "Land, labor and tenure: the institutional arrangements of conflict and cooperation in comparative perspective"), Carlos III de Madrid and the Autonoma de Barcelona (VIII Simposio de Historia Economica, 1996). The authors acknowledge funding from the Spanish government (PS94-0005)