If
one leases a field from his fellow for just a few years (less than
seven), he may not sow it with flax and he has no rights to the beams
of any sycamore trees growing there.
Although
flax is a very profitable crop, it depletes the soil excessively, and
it takes up to seven years for it to recover fully. Planting flax would
lead him to return the land in worse condition than he received it.
This
ruling applies only to a tenant-farmer, where the landowner receives a
fixed payment no matter what the land produces. In the case of a
sharecropper, we assume that the landowner agrees to a more intensive
use of the land based on the principle “let the land become poor but
not the owner”.
