On the Changing Nature of Canadian Crop Yield Distributions

Although there is significant literature on technological change in U.S. crop yields, very little has been done with Canadian yields. We model the changing nature of county-level yields for barley, canola, corn, oats, soybean, and wheat in Canada. We use mixtures to allow and test for heterogeneous rates of technological change within the yield-data-generating process. While we tend to find increasing but heterogeneous rates of technological change, increasing and asymmetric yield volatility, and increasing absolute but decreasing relative yield resiliency, our results differ across crops and exhibit spatial bifurcations within a crop. Using a standard attribution model, we find changing climate has differing effects across crops.