Part 1

As a transitive mechanism, the rental farming system has always paved the way of agriculture revolution. Iran farming system has been dominated with several challenges, including the high number of smallholders, small and scattered farms, the high average age of farmers, depopulation of villages due to permanent migration of the rural dweller and young's disinclination to agro activities.

Tackling all mentioned challenges demand to adopt a comprehensive policy as well as applied strategies; to this end, an advanced farm rental system was introduced.

Hindering of farm fragmentation and protecting the peasant system, rental farm system dates back to the initial governments of Iran plateau, when the kings rent out their own farms to the local influential people and received goods in return for a rent. In the Sassanid Emperor, the rulers lease the state lands to the farmers who were rich enough to manage farms, receiving levy as a kind of rent. The rental farming system went on as the land tenure system until Safavieh kingdom, however, in the Qajar period, it endured great changes, benefiting tenants.

Before the land revolution, in the Pahlavi the first and second era, there were three kinds of farm rental system. First, the landlords rented the whole or a part of the village, then as the owners, they cultivated the farms by employing small scale farmers, received the ownership interests and paid the share of the original owners afterward.

Second, small-scale landlords farm out their land, the tenant cultivated the farm by himself, nonetheless, the tenant is not allowed to assign the object of the lease to the third party, and moreover, the final crops would be divided between landlord and tenant based on the tenancy agreement.

The third one is the long term renting of the endowed or state farms.

 As a result of land reform, many of big farms as well as the state lands were sold to the peasants, however, many of the small-scale farmers deprived of land ownership, since they did not cultivate any land at the time of land reforming. The landless farmers have sustained the agro activities through farm rental system. Ordinarily, in this system, the tenants produced more than their needs, paying to the landlords in cash or kind; besides they did not have to do forced labor for the landlords. This system is money-economy, despite that, the tenancy agreement is unwritten, but the interest of the tenant is secured because of socioeconomic basis as well as his/her financial capacity. The governing relations of the rental farming system have been institutionalized during ages; however, these regulations had been acting based on the established usage rather than legally written documents. Under the influence of the governing social confidence of the rural communities, these regulations had been accepted and applied as the oral laws by the tenants, landlords as well as social bodies.