Are Crop Yields Normally Distributed?

The evidence for nonnormality of crop yields is reassessed. Three methodological problems are identified in typical yield distribution analyses: ( i ) misspecification of the nonrandom components of yield distributions, ( ii ) missreporting of statistical significance, and ( iii ) use of aggregate timeseries (ATS) data to represent farm‐level yield distributions. One or more of these problems infect virtually all evidence against normality to date. The positive contribution of the article is a set of principles that must be followed in any valid investigation of yield normality.