Hectares to Acres

A hectare is a square 100 meters on each side, or 10,000 m². The name means a hundred ares, where an are is 100 m², a unit that survives mainly in hectare itself. The hectare is not an SI unit, but it is officially accepted for use alongside SI and is the standard land measure across Europe, Australia, Latin America, Africa and most of Asia.

The acre is smaller: 4,046.86 m², so a hectare holds 10,000 ÷ 4,046.86 = 2.47105 acres. A full-size soccer pitch of 105 × 68 m is 0.714 ha, or about 1.76 acres, which is a handy picture for both units.

Agricultural statistics, crop yields and forest cover are reported in hectares almost everywhere, including by the FAO and the European Union. A yield given as 8 tonnes per hectare means about 3.24 tonnes per acre, since you divide per-hectare figures by 2.471, the reverse of converting the area itself. Mixing those two steps up is the most common error on farm spreadsheets.

In the US, farm sizes are in acres; the USDA puts the average farm at a few hundred acres, which is on the order of 180 hectares. A European family farm of 50 ha is about 124 acres. If a report gives land in square kilometers, note that 1 km² = 100 ha = 247.1 acres; the square km to square miles page handles regional scales.

Multiply by 2.5 and subtract 1%: 40 ha × 2.5 = 100, minus 1 gives 99 acres, against the exact 98.84. For the opposite direction, use the acres to hectares page, which also covers US land survey sections. For all other area pairs, open the unit converter.