Gewasdeel

Gewasdeel is a Dutch term used in historical and agrarian contexts to denote the portion of a crop yield allocated to a particular party, typically under a tenancy or sharecropping arrangement. In such contracts the gewasdeel defined how much of the harvest would belong to the landowner, the farmstead, or the tenant as rent in kind. The exact size of the gewasdeel could vary by field, crop type, and local agreement; it might be expressed as a fixed portion, a percentage, or a fixed quantity of produce.

Etymology: The word is composed of gewas, meaning crop or standing vegetation, and deel, part. The term appears in early modern and sometimes medieval Dutch agrarian documents.

Usage and context: Gewasdeel is most often encountered in historical records, legal acts, and agrarian treatises describing tenancy relations before modern cash-rent systems became common. In modern Dutch, the term is rarely used outside historical or scholarly writing, with pacht (lease) and huur in natura as more common terms for rent in kind.

See also: Pacht, Huur in natura, Landbouwrecht, Agrarische geschiedenis.