GROWING CROPS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

GROWING CROPSAuthored

The Law Mind • 1131 words

Definition

Growing crops are vegetation planted and cultivated by human effort that has not yet been harvested. In law, the term carries a specific and consequential question: are growing crops personal property (chattels) or real property (part of the land)? The answer is not fixed — it depends on context, and getting it wrong has serious consequences for transactions involving land sales, mortgages, leases, landlord-tenant disputes, and creditor claims.

The general framework: once seed is placed in the ground, it merges with the realty and is treated as real property until circumstances — primarily the nature of the crop and the relationship of the parties — convert it back into personal property. Annual crops raised primarily through human labor and cultivation (grain, corn, potatoes, turnips, garden vegetables) are most readily treated as personal property for purposes of sale, seizure, and inheritance, and have a long common law name for this category: *fructus industriales*. Perennial crops or vegetation that grow without annual replanting — fruit trees, timber, grass growing wild — are more firmly treated as part of the realty under the complementary doctrine of *fructus naturales*.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Growing crops" carries its plain agricultural meaning — plants in the ground that have not yet been harvested.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Similarly agricultural; no distinct legal overlay in common use.

The legal gap is significant. In ordinary speech, a growing crop is simply a crop that has not been cut or gathered. In law, the phrase triggers the personal property / real property classification question, which has direct consequences for who owns the crop after a land sale, whether a creditor can attach it, and whether it passes under a deed or a bill of sale. A buyer of farmland and a buyer's lender may have entirely different assumptions about whether an unharvested crop comes with the land — law provides the answer, but only if you know to ask the question.

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Common Confusion

Growing crops are frequently confused with two overlapping categories. First, *emblements* — a related but narrower doctrine specifically governing the right of a tenant or outgoing occupant to re-enter and harvest a crop they planted when their tenancy or interest ends unexpectedly. Emblements is a remedy; "growing crops" is the underlying property classification. Second, the *fructus industriales / fructus naturales* distinction is sometimes collapsed, leading researchers to misapply authorities about orchard fruit or standing timber to annual row crops, or vice versa. The rules are not identical and should not be treated interchangeably.

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Why It Matters in Research

The classification of growing crops as real or personal property is one of the older classification problems in Anglo-American law, and the answer has shifted depending on the legal context being examined. Researchers working in historical sources need to track three distinct fault lines.

First, the context dependency. The same crop may be real property for purposes of a deed conveyance but personal property for purposes of a chattel mortgage or an execution by a creditor. Historical cases often announce a rule that sounds absolute but is actually limited to one transactional context. Read holdings carefully.

Second, the tenant-planter distinction. Bouvier's entry signals this directly: the classification often turns on whether the crop was planted by the owner or a tenant. A tenant who plants annual crops retains a personal property interest in them — the basis of the emblements doctrine — even after the tenancy ends. An owner who plants and then sells the land may or may not convey the growing crop with the land depending on the deed language and applicable state rule. Conflating owner-planted and tenant-planted crops across historical sources will produce inconsistent research results.

Third, the UCC transition. In modern commercial law, Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code governs security interests in growing crops, treating them as a distinct category of collateral with specific filing rules for perfection (generally requiring filing in the county where the land is located). Pre-UCC security instruments — crop mortgages, agricultural liens, chattel mortgages — operated under common law and varied state statutory frameworks. Researchers using pre-1960s sources should not assume modern UCC rules applied.

The Bouvier's entry cites 69 Ala. 435, which illustrates the moment-of-planting rule: at the time seed enters the ground, it ceases to be a chattel and becomes part of the realty. This rule has intuitive appeal but immediate complications — it would mean a farmer who plants wheat and then sells only the crop (not the land) is selling something that has, for a moment at least, become real property. The law developed workarounds, but researchers will find courts reasoning in different directions depending on which problem they were solving.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's treatment is workmanlike and accurate for its era. It correctly identifies the dual character of growing crops — personal in some contexts, real in others — and ties the classification to the method of cultivation (annual crops raised by human labor are more readily treated as personal property). The citation to 69 Ala. 435 for the moment-of-planting rule reflects standard 19th-century doctrine.

What Bouvier's does not address: the emblements doctrine gets only passing mention, the tenant-vs.-owner distinction is incompletely developed, and there is no treatment of how growing crops interact with mortgage instruments or execution sales — areas where 19th-century American courts generated substantial and sometimes conflicting authority. Researchers should supplement Bouvier's with period agricultural lien cases and, for any post-mid-20th century research, with UCC Article 9 materials.

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Jurisdictional Note

State law controls the classification of growing crops as real or personal property for most purposes, and states varied considerably before UCC uniformity partially rationalized the secured transactions piece. Southern states with strong agricultural economies developed detailed crop lien statutes in the post-Civil War period that created sui generis property interests not easily mapped onto the real/personal distinction. Researchers working in those jurisdictions should consult state-specific statutory history alongside common law authorities.

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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

The Law Mind Insurance Law Encyclopedia, "Crop Insurance — Federal Crop Insurance Act, RMA, and Multi-Peril Crop Insurance": relevant for researchers examining insurable interests in growing crops and the federal regulatory framework governing crop loss.

The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia, "Strict Liability and Abnormally Dangerous Activities — Crop Dusting and Pesticide Drift": relevant when growing crops appear as the subject of property damage claims in strict liability or nuisance contexts.

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GROWING CROPSmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

Growing crops of grain, potatoes, turnips, and all annual crops raised by the cultivation of man, are in certain cases personal chattels, and in others, part of the realty. A crop is to be considered as growing from the time the seed is put in the ground, at which time the seed is no longer a chattel, but becomes part of the realty, and passes with a sale of it: 69 Ala. 435. If planted by the owner of the land, they are a part of the realty, but may by sale become personal chattels, if they are fit for harvest, and the sale con- templates their being cut and carried off, and not a right in the vendee to enter and cultivate. So even with trees; 4 Metc. Mass, 580; 9 B. & C. 561; 7 Ν. Η. 522; 11 Co. 50. The distinction has been made that growing crops of grain and annual produc- tions raised by cultivation and the industry of man are personal chattels; while trees, fruit, or grass and other natural products of the earth are parcel of the land; 1 Denio 550. But if the owner in fee conveys land before the crop is severed, the crop passes with the land as appertaining to it; 41 III. 466; 33 Pa. 254; 9 Rob. (La.) 256; and the same rule applies to foreclosure sales; 8 Wend. 584; 29 Pa. 68; 42 N. Y. 150. See 20 Am. L. Reg. 615, n. But before the fore- closure sale is confirmed, the purchaser has no title, with right to possession in the crops growing on the land at the time of sale, that will entitle him to maintain replevin there-- for after they have been severed by the per- son in possession; 46 Wis. 301. Though growing crops, unless reserved, pass under a conveyance of the land, they are subject to levy and sale the same as other personal property; 47 Minn. 525. If a tenant, who holds for a certain time, plant annual crops, or even trees in a nursery for the purposes of transplantation and sale, they are per- sonal chattels when fit for harvest; 1 Metc. Mass. 27, 313; 4 Taunt. 316, per Heath, J. If planted by a tenant for an uncertain period, they are regarded, whether mature or not, in many respects as personal prop- erty, but liable to become part of the realty if the tenant voluntarily abandons or for- feits possession of the premises; 5 Co. 116 a; 5 Halst. 128; Co. Litt. 55; 2 Johns 418, 421, n. See 2 Dana 206; 2 Rawle 161; 1 Washb. R. P. 3. See as to validity and effect of mortgages on crops planted and unplanted, MORTGAGE. Between the lessor of lands and his lessee on shares, growing crops are personal prop- erty, and they may be sold by parol as against a subsequent grantee, especially where the latter has notice of such sale: 39 Ill. App. 404. The grantor of farm lands may reserve the growing crops by oral agreement; 36 N. E. Rep. (Ind.) 914. The measure of damages for the destruc- tion of a crop planted, but not yet up, is the rental value of the land and the cost of the seed and labor; but when the crop is somewhat matured, so that the product can be fairly determined, the value thereof when destroyed is the measure of damages; 43 III. App. 108. See 56 Ark. 612; 57 id. 512. Where a crop is lost through the wrongful act of another, the measure of damages is the market value of the crop less the cost of producing, harvesting, and marketing it; 8 Wash. 337; 4 Tex. Civ. App. 550. See 25 S. W. Rep. (Tex.) 1023.

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