Crop Yield Skewness Under Law of Minimum Technology

No satisfactory motivation has been forwarded in favor of any crop yield distribution, including thenormal. This article explores the foundations of yield distributions for the Law of the Minimum resourceconstraint technology at the plot level of analysis.With independent, identical, uniform resourceavailability distributions the yield skew is positive, whereas it is negative whenever the distributionsare normal. Simulations show how asymmetries in resource availabilities determine skewness. It issuggested that a negative yield skew occurs whenever production is tightly controlled so that the lefttails of some resources availabilities distributions are thin. Irrigation may increase yield skewness.