Southern tenant farmers who rented land and supplies from landlords in return for substantial portions of their crops. This could be half in the case of a farmer who had no mules or tools; in addition, exorbitantly priced living expenses added to annual debts creating a cycle of poverty for families. At their peak in the 1930s, such arrangements encompassed 65 percent of cotton-belt farmers, identifying the South as an economically blighted zone. Increased mechanization after the Second World War slowly eliminated this neofeudal agricultural relationship while forcing many rural Southerners to migrate to cities and even to move outside the South.