Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Has the average farm size increased or decreased since 1960?

About this data

Source
Lowder et al. (2016) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 1, 2016
Date range
2000–2000

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Lowder et al. – The number, size, and distribution of farms, smallholder farms, and family farms worldwide

This study uses agricultural census data to estimate the number and size distribution of farm holdings by country.

This article relies on data from numerous agricultural censuses, which are representative of all farms or farm households in a country. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has promoted the Programme for the World Census of Agriculture (WCA) since 1950 by providing governments with guidance on standard methodology and contents for their agricultural census.

Retrieved on
January 1, 2016
Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X15002703
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Lowder, S. K., Skoet, J., and Raney, T. (2016). The number, size, and distribution of farms, smallholder farms, and family farms worldwide. World Development, 87, 16-29.

This study uses agricultural census data to estimate the number and size distribution of farm holdings by country.

This article relies on data from numerous agricultural censuses, which are representative of all farms or farm households in a country. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has promoted the Programme for the World Census of Agriculture (WCA) since 1950 by providing governments with guidance on standard methodology and contents for their agricultural census.

Retrieved on
January 1, 2016
Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X15002703
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Lowder, S. K., Skoet, J., and Raney, T. (2016). The number, size, and distribution of farms, smallholder farms, and family farms worldwide. World Development, 87, 16-29.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Has the average farm size increased or decreased since 1960?”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Lowder et al.. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260512-085513/grapher/farm-size-change.html [online resource] (archived on May 12, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Lowder et al. (2016) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Lowder et al. (2016) – processed by Our World in Data. “Has the average farm size increased or decreased since 1960?” [dataset]. Lowder et al., “The number, size, and distribution of farms, smallholder farms, and family farms worldwide” [original data]. Retrieved May 12, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260512-085513/grapher/farm-size-change.html (archived on May 12, 2026).

Download

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

Download full data

Includes all entities and time points

Download displayed data

Includes only the entities and time points currently visible in the chart

Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farm-size-change.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear