We'll talk about a sharecropper in this Mishnah. A sharecropper is somebody who agrees to work the land on behalf of the owner and give a percentage of the yield to the owner of the land. For example, the sharecropper would work the land, keep two-thirds of the yield, and hand over one-third of the yield to the owner of the farm.
What happens, though, if, after that agreement, the sharecropper takes possession of the land for a certain term and decides to leave it unplanted? He just gets lazy and doesn't do anything over there. What happens to him? The Mishnah says: Somebody rents a field from his friend, and he's a sharecropper. He's supposed to give him a portion of the yield, and he leaves the field bare. He doesn't plow it. He doesn't plant anything there. He doesn't do anything there. So we evaluate the field and see how much it was supposed to produce if it had been planted. Then the sharecropper would be obligated to give the owner of the field what the owner would have received if the crops had been planted and grown.
Because when a sharecropper has an agreement with the owner, they usually write the following in the rental document: “If I leave the field fallow, if I don't work it, I will pay you based on what the field would have produced if I planted it properly.” That's what the sharecropper usually writes in the terms of the rental, in the agreement with the owner of the land. This would apply even if he never wrote anything. We could say that they usually go on the normal minhag, whatever is done over here, whatever is usually done. The terms that usually happen between a sharecropper and the owner of the land would kick in and apply here as well. So if a person decides not to work, he would still have to hand over the normal yield to the owner of the land.