The Evaluation of Current Sharecropping Practices on Hazelnut Orchards within the Framework of the Musaqat Agreement in Hanafi School

Abstract

Agricultural production has an important role in the Turkish economy as in many countries. However, the hazelnuts, tea and fresh fruits have been produced through inefficient methods for a long time. With the development of technology and new techniques, farmers have started to produce more efficient agricultural production with low costs. The basis of these partnerships, known as sharecroppers among the farmers, is based on muzara'ah and musaqat partnerships in Islamic Law. However, today it is not known whether these partnerships are made in accordance with the conditions of muzara'ah and musaqat agreements. In this study, we investigate how musaqat partnerships are made over hazelnut production, and we also try to detect problems that appear during the partnership. In addition, we offer suggestions to eliminate the detected problems. When the literature on musaqat is examined, it is seen that this partnership agreement is not the subject of research separately, and that the issue is generally discussed in some fiqh issues that concern partnership agreements. During the literature review, it was seen that today there are no studies on how the partnership contract is fulfilled and what problems emerge in terms of Islamic law. The fact that this study directly focuses on the current practices of musaqat partnership and identifies the emerging fiqh problems will fill a gap in the literature. In the study in which the qualitative research method was adopted, the phenomenological approach was used as the research design. Data collection methods of the study are semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The sampling of the study consists of 8 people selected by the snowball sampling. Six of the participants are sharecroppers, and two of them are owner of hazelnut orchards. As a result of the analysis of qualitative data, eight themes emerged, and these themes were presented in the findings section. The prominent points regarding the findings are listed below. Orchard owners often manage their orchards through the musaqat partnership because they are not able to take care of their orchards adequately. Families who do not have enough workforce to maintain the hazelnut orchard and people who do not have technical knowledge about the hazelnut orchard prefer the musaqat partnership. It has been observed that the musaqat partnership established between the orchard owner and the sharecropper is usually established verbally, and the parties do not feel the need to make a written contract. The duration of the musaqat partnerships varies between one year and seven years. The way of expense sharing also varies. One of the common occurrences in the partnership established between the sharecropper and the orchard owner is that the orchard owner terminates the partnership before the contract expires. The reason for the orchard owner to terminate the partnership is generally not justified. One of the conflict reasons between the partners is that they do not talk about the details of the partnership when making an agreement at the beginning. For example, although they agree on making a partnership, they do not discuss the basic issues such as which expenses will be shared, which expenses will not be shared, and how the crop will be shared in detail. This situation causes conflicts among the parties in the process. After the partnership has been established, another point that the sharecroppers say is that the orchard owner frequently intervenes in the orchard maintenance and wants to have the orchard maintained in his own way. In some cases, a fixed amount of crop has been adopted in crop sharing. The mention of a fixed price emerges as an element affecting the legitimacy of the contract in terms of fiqh.