摘要：Peanut and corn are two major crops in the tri-state area of the Southeast US, an area encompassing North Florida, Southwest Georgia, and Southeast Alabama. Sharecroppers in this region apply higher amount of input in crop production than theaverage farmers. We analyzed the behavior of sharecroppers in this region with regard totheir fertilizer application decisions. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested based onsharecroppers' fertilizer application decisions: one assuming that sharecroppers are riskaverse farmers and the other assuming that sharecroppers are regret minimizers. Ourresults show that a sharecropper uses different fertilizer treatments when minimizing riskdepending on risk perspective and desired income. Sharecroppers who apply morefertilizer to obtain a desired level of income are regret minimizers where as sharecropperswho apply relatively low fertilizer are risk minimizer. At the same desired level of income,a regret minimizer farmer would apply a higher amount of fertilizer than the risk aversefarmers. Our analysis revealed that sharecroppers in the Southeast US are regretminimizers as they apply a higher amount of fertilizer than an average farmer on the majorcrops grown in the region. The result of this study also confirms the result of a previousstudy in the region which reported that sharecroppers in the region are over capitalizedand apply more fertilizer than average farmers.
