Final answer:
Sharecropping is an agricultural system where landlords allow tenants to use their land in exchange for a portion of the harvest, resulting in a cycle of debt and economic dependency that affected the South's development.
Step-by-step explanation:
The agricultural system that emerged in the South after the Civil War, where planters required labor and freedmen needed jobs, is known as sharecropping. In this system, landlords allowed tenants to use their land in exchange for a portion of the crops produced. This form of agriculture often plunged tenants into debt to their landlords, making it difficult to leave the land and leading to a new form of economic subjugation similar in some ways to slavery.
Sharecropping grew rapidly as both freed black people and landless white citizens, many of whom had lost property and were economically devastated, entered into these agreements. The sharecroppers, who were hoping for economic independence, found themselves instead trapped in a cycle of debt because of crop-lien laws, high interest rates, and the power hierarchy established by Southern courts that prioritized payment to merchants, mills, banks, brokers, and landowners over laborers.
The ramifications of sharecropping had a long-term effect on the economic development of the South, keeping it predominantly agricultural and hindering its progression into other industries. As cotton and other cash crops were the core of the Southern economy, those involved in their production, particularly sharecroppers, remained in a state of desperate poverty.