What do we really know about the number and …

1 What do we really know about the number and distribution of farms and family farms in the world? Background paper for The State of food and agriculture 2014 Sarah K. Lowder, Jakob Skoet and Saumya Singh ESA Working paper No. 14- 02 April 2014 Agricultural Development Economics Division food and agriculture Organization of the United Nations Recommended citation Lowder, , Skoet, J. and Singh, S. 2014. What do we really know about the number and distribution of farms and family farms worldwide? Background paper for The State of food and agriculture 2014. ESA Working paper No.

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5 Background paper for The State of food and agriculture 2014 Sarah K. Lowder, Jakob Skoet and Saumya Singh1 Abstract The agricultural economics literature provides various estimates of the number of farms and small farms in the world. This paper is an effort to provide a more complete and up to date as well as carefully documented estimate of the total number of farms in the world, as well as by region and level of income. It uses data from numerous rounds of the World Census of agriculture , the only dataset available which allows the user to gain a complete picture of the total number of farms globally and at the country level.

6 The paper provides estimates of the number of family farms, the number of farms by size as well as the distibution of farmland by farm size. These estimates find that: there are at least 570 million farms worldwide, of which more than 500 million can be considered family farms. Most of the world s farms are very small, with more than 475 million farms being less than 2 hectares in size. Although the vast majority of the world s farms are smaller than 2 hectares, they operate only a small share of the world s farmland. Farmland distribution would seem quite unequal at the global level, but it is less so in low- and lower-middle-income countries as well as in some regional groups.

7 These estimates have serious limitations and the collection of more up-to-date agricultural census data, including data on farmland distribution is essential to our having a more representative picture of the number of farms, the number of family farms and farm size as well as farmland distribution worldwide. Keywords: family farm; small farm; farm size; smallholders; farmland distribution JEL codes: O13, Q10, Q15, Q24 1 Sarah K. Lowder and Jakob Skoet are with the Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) of the food and agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

8 Saumya Singh, from Princeton University ,volunteered with ESA during the summer of 2013. For any questions or comments, please contact iii Contents Acknowledgements .. iv 1. Introduction .. 1 2. Limitations of the data and estimates .. 1 3. How many farms are there in the world? .. 3 4. What is family farming? .. 5 5. How prevalent are family farms worldwide? .. 7 6. What do we know about average farm size? .. 9 7. How large are the world s farms? .. 11 8. What can we say about farmland distribution? .. 12 9. Conclusions .. 18 Works 19 Annexes 1 6: Country level data .. 21 iv Acknowledgements This paper was prepared as background research in support of FAO s forthcoming The State of food and agriculture 2014.

9 The report will be available at The authors are most grateful for the provision of agricultural census reports by the Statistics Division of FAO. Helpful feedback was received from numerous colleagues. In particular, the authors wish to thank Jairo Castano, Adriana Neciu, Terri Raney, Andr Croppenstedt, Cheng Fang, Michelle Kendrick, George Rapsomanikis, Kostas Stamoulis and Dominique Van Der Mensbrugghe (FAO). Any errors and omissions are those of the authors. ESA Working paper No. 14-02 1 1. Introduction The agricultural economics literature provides various estimates of the number of farms and small farms in the world.

10 Nagayets (2005) used agricultural census data from FAO to estimate that there are about 525 million farms of all sizes in the world. Other authors use similar data to maintain that there are about 500 million small farms (those with less than 2 hectares) (Hazell, Poulton, Wiggins, & Dorward, 2010) (IFAD, 2011). This paper is an effort to provide a more complete and up to date as well as carefully documented estimate of the total number of farms in the world, as well as by region and level of income. It provides some estimates of the number of family farms, the number of farms by size as well as the distibution of farmland by farm size.