Comparison of candidate probability distributions for historical yield distributions

There is little agreement as to which common theoretical distribution provides the best representation of actual farm level crop yields. The unavailability of farm level yield data, the presence of trends due to technological changes, and inter-farm variation in yields, all complicate the selection of an appropriate distributional form. This paper explores the appropriateness of seven candidate distributions in fitting historical data. The study attempts to identify a common distributional form which provides the most reasonable representation for farm level yields.