Definition
A growing crop — that is, a crop that has been planted and is in the process of growing but has not yet been harvested. The term describes the crop in its intermediate state: past the point of planting but before severance from the land.
"Going crop" most commonly arises in three legal contexts:
1. Property and conveyancing: Whether a going crop passes with a conveyance of land or belongs to the seller as personal property. Annual crops raised by the labor and industry of the cultivator (fructus industriales) are generally treated as personal property and may be reserved by a seller even when the land itself is transferred. Perennial crops or those not dependent on annual cultivation may be treated differently.
2. Landlord and tenant: At the expiration of a tenancy, a going crop raises questions of whether the outgoing tenant may re-enter to tend and harvest crops planted during the tenancy. Under the doctrine of away-going crops (or way-going crops), a tenant is often entitled to re-enter for this purpose.
3. Mortgage and security interests: A going crop may serve as collateral. Whether it is treated as real property (attached to the land) or personal property affects how a security interest is created, perfected, and enforced.
Common Confusion
GOING CROP vs. EMBLEMENTS: Emblements is the older common-law doctrine conferring on a tenant or life tenant the right to harvest crops they planted when their tenancy ends unexpectedly or through no fault of their own. "Going crop" is descriptive — it identifies what the crop is (growing, unharvested). "Emblements" is doctrinal — it identifies the right to take that crop. A researcher encountering "going crop" in a deed dispute is in property-transfer territory; encountering "emblements" signals a tenancy or life-estate termination problem. The terms are related but not interchangeable, and historical sources sometimes blur the boundary.
GOING CROP vs. FRUCTUS INDUSTRIALES: Fructus industriales (annual crops produced by labor) is the broader classificatory concept explaining why annual crops are personal property. "Going crop" is the practical term used in transactional and litigation contexts to describe the specific subject matter at issue. Historical dictionaries frequently move between the two without signaling the shift.
Why It Matters in Research
The central research trap with "going crop" is the personal property / real property classification, which has not been uniform across time or jurisdiction. In older English and early American sources, the treatment of a going crop as personalty was well-established for annual crops raised by cultivation, but the line between annual and perennial crops, and between crops already severed and crops still in the ground, generated substantial litigation. Researchers reading conveyancing instruments or lease agreements from the nineteenth century must determine which rule the drafting jurisdiction applied at the time of execution — the answer affects whether a going crop passed under a deed, was reachable by a mortgagee, or belonged to an executor or heir.
In mortgage and secured transactions research, the modern framework under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) substantially displaced the older real-property treatment of growing crops as collateral, but the transition was uneven. Pre-UCC cases and some real-property-based agricultural lending instruments still appear in title chains and historical litigation. The UCC treats growing crops as farm products, a subcategory of goods, and perfection is governed by Article 9 filing rules — a significant departure from older fixture or realty analysis.
The "away-going crop" or "way-going crop" variant is particularly common in English agricultural lease materials and appears in American jurisdictions with strong English agrarian law inheritance. Researchers working in mid-Atlantic and Southern states through the nineteenth century should be alert to both spellings and both compound forms.
Corpus connections: Going crop questions frequently appear alongside terms such as LEASE, TENANCY AT WILL, MORTGAGE, FIXTURE, and CONVEYANCE. Security interest research will push toward UCC Article 9 materials. Insurance research intersects with federal crop insurance frameworks.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence do not carry a direct entry for "going crop" in the available excerpted material — the retrieved passage addresses wayleave, an unrelated easement concept, suggesting either a corpus retrieval gap or that the term did not receive independent treatment in that edition. This absence is itself informative: the term was sufficiently embedded in general property and agricultural law vocabulary that it may have been treated under CROP, EMBLEMENTS, or FRUCTUS INDUSTRIALES rather than as a standalone entry.
Historical legal dictionaries generally handle going crops within the fructus industriales framework. Bouvier's Law Dictionary addresses the distinction between fructus naturales and fructus industriales at length, establishing the personal-property classification for annual cultivated crops and noting the tenant's right to harvest. The practical term "going crop" functions in case law and conveyancing practice as the colloquial shorthand for this concept, and researchers should cross-reference those doctrinal headings when period dictionaries do not yield a direct hit.
Jurisdictional Note
Treatment of going crops as personal property is broadly consistent across American common-law jurisdictions, but the specifics of mortgage perfection, the scope of away-going crop rights in agricultural leases, and the interaction with state agricultural lien statutes vary. States with significant agricultural economies often developed detailed statutory frameworks governing crop liens and harvest rights that supplement or modify the common-law baseline.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
insurance_70: Crop Insurance — Federal Crop Insurance Act, RMA, and Multi-Peril Crop Insurance (The Law Mind Insurance Law Encyclopedia)