fire, wind, hail, or anything else that destroys it and would likewise have destroyed any other crop grown there.
There are two views on this:
The stronger view is that the loss is borne by the lessor, because this calamity has destroyed the benefit intended by the contract. The intended benefit is that which enables the crop to remain growing until it can be harvested. If something happens to the land that entirely prevents this benefit, the purpose of the contract is frustrated before the tenant has had the opportunity to obtain it. The same applies if the land is saline and the crop consequently perishes, or if it lies beside a sea or river and the water ruins the land before the crop fully matures, and in similar cases.
In all these cases, the loss is borne by the lessor, and the tenant owes no rent for what has become unusable. This is comparable to the hired animal dying, or the water supply failing so that none of the benefit intended by the contract can be obtained, and other such cases.
This is not like the tenant’s property being stolen from the house or destroyed there by fire, for the benefit intended by the contract remains unchanged. Both he and others can still make use of the house by protecting it against thieves or fire. A comparable case is the loss of the goods for whose transport he hired an animal: he still owes the hire charge. This differs from a calamity that entirely prevents both him and others from making use of the property, for that is equivalent to the hired animal dying or the leased house burning down. And analogous to the theft of