Answer:
farmers rented land from landowners in return for a share of the crops.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the 1800´s in america sharecropping was becoming more and more popular, the idea of sharecropping consisted in two people, one that owned the land, and the other that knew how to work with it, and they made a deal where the owner rented the land for only a share of the final harvest of the portion of the land rented. This allowed many people that didn´t have land to grow crops, and the owners didn´t have to pay for workers or the expenses of growing crops on their property.