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A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labour along with at times varying amounts of capital and management. Depending on the contract, tenants can make payments to the owner either of a fixed portion of the product, in cash or in a combination. The rights the tenant has over the land and the form and measure of the payment varies across systems (geographically and chronologically). In some systems, the tenant could be evicted at whim (tenancy at will); in others, the landowner and tenant sign a contract for a fixed number of years (tenancy for years or indenture).

Types of tenant farming include sharecropping and some forms of peonage, but most often the term is used for long-term use of another's land in return for crop or cash. Sometimes short term (crop season) rental of property, when payment is deferred until the end of the season, is classified as tenant farming. Usually, tenant farming does not apply to non-crop rental of farm land for purposes of animal husbandry.

When tenant farming is used as distinct from sharecropping, which is not always, the element that tends to most distinguish sharecropping is the provision of food and clothing to the sharecroppers by the landlord. It is not sharecropping where the tenant furnishes the seed, farm tools and work animals.

Tenant farming is distinct from the serfdom of medieval Europe, where the land and the serfs were legally inseparable. One confusing factor is that when labour was plentiful, some tenant farmers would contract with their lords to become serfs in order to stay on the lord's land, even though, and sometimes because, they would pass that status down to their children.

In England and Wales the system of protection for tenant farmers was developed gradually from 1875 through to the consolidating legislation in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. That statute covered tenancies over agricultural land where the land was used for a trade or business and the definition of "agriculture" in section 96(1) was wide enough to include various uses that in themselves were not agricultural but were deemed so if ancillary to agriculture (eg woodlands).The essence of the code was to establish complex constraints on the landlord's ability to give notice to quit, whilst also converting fixed term tenancies into yearly tenancies at the conclusion of the fixed term.In addition, there was a uniform rent ascertainment scheme contained in section 12.Up to two compulsory occasions were available on the death or retirement of the tenant to apply to the Agricultural Land Tribunal for the grant of a new tenancy also protected by the 1986 Act. So difficult did it become to obtain new tenancies for rental as a result of landlords' reluctance to have a tenant protected by the 1986 Act that in 1995 the government of the day, with the full support of relevant industry organisations, enacted a new market-oriented code in the form of the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995. The protection of the 1986 Act remains in respect of existing tenancies and those tenancies falling within section 4 of the 1995 Act. For all other tenancies granted on or after 1st September 1995 their regulation is within the 1995 Act framework. That Act was improved with effect from 18th October 2006 by the Regulatory Reform (Agricultural Tenancies)(England and Wales)Order 2006 SI 2006/2805, which also contains changes to the 1986 Act.Tenancies granted after 18th October 2006 over agricultural land used for a trade or business will fall within the limited protection of the 1995 Act so as to enjoy (provided the term is more than two years in length or there is a yearly tenancy) a mandatory minimum twelve months written notice to quit, including in respect of fixed terms.There is for all tenancies within the scope of the Act a mandatory tenants' right to remove fixtures and buildings (section 8) together with compensation for improvements (Part III).The rent review provisions in Part II may be the subject of choice to a much greater extent than previously.Disputes under the Act are usually, by the terms of Part IV, the subject of statutory arbitration controlled by the framework of the Arbitration Act 1996.

Scotland has its own independent legal system and the legislation there differs from that of England and Wales.

• Serfdom
• Sharecropping
• Metayage system of sharecropping
• History of the United States (1865-1918)

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