Siman 324

One who leases a field from his fellow to sow it with barley may not sow it with wheat, because they exhaust the soil more than barley. But if he leased it to sow it with wheat, he may sow it with barley and purchase wheat for his lease-payment from the market. And even though he could say, "I want wheat from my own land," as written in siman 322, nevertheless, it was explained there that if he does not wish to sow it at all, he cannot compel him for this reason. If so, the same applies when he wishes to sow that which is lighter for the soil and purchases wheat for him from the market, for he cannot compel him [it appears to me]. And if he leased it to sow legumes, he may not sow it with grain; if he leased it for grain, he may sow it with legumes. This is according to the version of the Rambam, and according to this, grain exhausts the soil more than legumes. And some say the opposite: if for grain, he may not sow it with legumes; if for legumes, he may sow it with grain, for legumes exhaust the soil more. And this matter depends on the soil, as the Rambam wrote, that in Babylonia and its like, there the legumes exhaust the land, and therefore one may not sow legumes there. And some say that in Babylonia, which is a marshland and submerged in water-swamps, he may change and sow whatever he wishes, for its soil, due to its richness, is not concerned with exhaustion. And these matters are done in this regard according to what they know of the nature of the land of this place from those involved in its plowing and its cultivation. And there is one who wrote that our lands are more similar to those of Babylonia than those of Eretz Yisrael [Nimukei Yosef], and there are no general rules in this, and every single place is according to its context and its nature [and as for why we do not rule like Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel in Bava Metzia 106b, the Bach wrote that it is because the sugya there proves not like him, and with this the words of the Tiferet Shmuel there were rejected, and what the Sma wrote requires further study, as the Pnei Moshe wrote in the commentary to the Yerushalmi there, and examine it closely].

Some say that all this applies to a lease, but in a sharecropping arrangement, he may change even to a crop that exhausts the soil; for since he takes a portion of the field according to what they stipulated between them and does not take a fixed amount, when he sows something that exhausts it more, it is worth more, and he will have his portion in a greater amount. And people say: "Let the land be exhausted, but let its master not be exhausted." According to this, if in a lease he wishes to give him his lease-payment from this species that he will sow, it is also permitted for him to change; rather, it is the way of the matter that in a lease, where he fixes for him such-and-all wheat or another species, he gives him the thing he fixed for him. But in a sharecropping arrangement, where he is like a partner, he takes a portion of whatever he sows. And there are those who disagree and hold that even to a thing that does not exhaust more, he cannot change in a sharecropping arrangement; for since a sharecropper's way is only to give from what grows in the field, it is possible that the landowner is particular to sow specifically this species because he needs this species. But in a lease, he can buy for him from the market, and he cannot compel him to sow for this reason; but in a sharecropping arrangement, he can compel him to sow specifically, as I wrote in siman 322, section 5. [And the Taz raised a difficulty regarding this and follows his reasoning there, and from this is a proof to what I wrote there, that the Ramban and the Maggid Mishneh, the proponents of this view, hold as I have written, and examine it closely].