Land Area Calculation: Bigha, Acre, Hectare, Kanal Guide
| Quick answer Convert every land unit through square meters. Divide square meters by 4,047 to get acres and by 10,000 to get hectares. One acre equals 4,047 square meters, 43,560 square feet, 8 kanals or 160 marlas. One hectare equals 2.471 acres. A bigha has no fixed size and runs from roughly 809 square meters in Uttarakhand to 6,773 square meters in the Nepal Terai, so always ask which bigha is meant before you agree on a price or a fertilizer dose. |
Key Takeaways
- 1 acre equals 4,047 square meters, 43,560 square feet, 8 kanals and 160 marlas.
- 1 hectare equals 10,000 square meters, 2.471 acres, and about 19.77 kanals.
- 1 bigha varies by region. Treat it as a local unit, never as a fixed number.
- Pakistani extension advice and input rates are written per acre. Research papers and FAO data are written per hectare. Convert before you buy.
- Your fard or jamabandi is the legally recognized area of record. Tape and GPS readings are working numbers, not proof.
- To move any rate from a hectare basis to an acre basis, multiply by 0.405.
Take a fertilizer rate written for one hectare, spread it over one acre, and you have just applied about two and a half times what the crop needs. Money burns at the dealer counter, nitrogen leaches past the root zone, and in a dry spell the crop can scorch. That is why land area calculation deserves more respect than it usually gets. It is not paperwork. It is the number that sits underneath every bag, every seed lot, every irrigation turn and every subsidy form you will ever fill.
This guide covers what each unit actually measures, exact conversion tables you can keep, three field-tested ways to measure your own plot, and the arithmetic that turns your area into real input quantities. If you would rather skip the maths entirely, the Foods Farming land area converter handles acre, hectare, bigha, kanal, marla and square feet in one screen.
The Main Land Area Units in Pakistan and South Asia
South Asia runs two measurement systems side by side. There is the international system used by governments and researchers, and there is the revenue system your grandfather used, which survives in the patwari record and in every roadside conversation about land. You need both.
Acre
The acre is the working unit of Pakistani agriculture. Fertilizer doses, seed rates, spray volumes, tractor rates, tube well charges and most government schemes are quoted per acre. One acre equals 43,560 square feet, 4,840 square yards or 4,046.86 square meters, which nearly everyone rounds to 4,047.
A useful picture: a perfectly square acre measures about 208.7 feet on each side, or roughly 63.6 meters. In Punjab you will also hear killa for one acre and murabba or square for a block of 25 acres.
Hectare
The hectare is the metric standard. It is what the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the provincial agriculture departments, FAO datasets, and every research paper use. One hectare equals 10,000 square meters, which is a square 100 meters on each side, and works out to 2.471 acres.
Here is where it matters. If a variety trial reports 5 tonnes per hectare, that is 5 divided by 2.471, or about 2.02 tonnes per acre, which is roughly 44 maunds. Compare a hectare yield with an acre yield and you will think a variety is twice as good as it is. The crop yield estimator keeps both bases straight for you.
Bigha
Bigha is the unit that causes the most arguments, because there is no single bigha. It is a regional unit whose size was fixed by local revenue practice, so it changes as you cross district and state lines. Many states also split it into a pucca (large) and kachcha (small) bigha, where the kachcha version is usually one third of the pucca one.
The range is not small. A Nepali Terai bigha is more than eight times an Uttarakhand bigha. Never accept a bigha figure without asking which bigha, and never plan a fertilizer purchase on one until you have converted it to acres.
Kanal and Marla
Kanal and marla dominate Punjab on both sides of the border, for farmland and for housing plots alike. One acre equals 8 kanals, one kanal equals 20 marlas, and therefore one acre equals 160 marlas. In the standard Pakistani system a marla is 30.25 square yards, or 272.25 square feet, or 25.29 square meters.
A field tip that saves time: the old revenue measuring unit is the karam, a length of 5.5 feet. A square of 5.5 feet by 5.5 feet is one sarsai, nine sarsai make one marla, and one marla is therefore a square of 16.5 feet by 16.5 feet. A standard one kanal plot of 33 feet by 165 feet is exactly 5,445 square feet. Once you can see the karam in a field, you can estimate marlas by eye.
One warning from experience. In parts of urban Punjab, including older Lahore records, a marla is treated as 25 square yards rather than 30.25. On a five marla plot that is a difference of 26 square yards. Always confirm which marla the seller is quoting.
Katha, Guntha, Cent and Other Local Units
A few more units you will meet in listings and revenue papers. A katha is one twentieth of a bigha, so it inherits the same regional variation. A guntha, common in Maharashtra and Gujarat, is 1,089 square feet, and 40 guntha make an acre. A cent, used across South India, is 435.6 square feet, and 100 cents make an acre. In Nepal, hill districts use the ropani of about 508.7 square meters while the plains use the bigha.
Land Area Conversion Table
This is the table worth screenshotting. Every row shows one unit expressed four ways, so you can jump between systems without a second step.
| Unit | Square Meters | Square Feet | Acres | Hectares |
| 1 Square Meter | 1 | 10.76 | 0.000247 | 0.0001 |
| 1 Square Yard | 0.836 | 9 | 0.000207 | 0.0000836 |
| 1 Sarsai | 2.81 | 30.25 | 0.00069 | 0.00028 |
| 1 Marla | 25.29 | 272.25 | 0.00625 | 0.00253 |
| 1 Cent | 40.47 | 435.6 | 0.01 | 0.004047 |
| 1 Guntha | 101.17 | 1,089 | 0.025 | 0.0101 |
| 1 Kanal | 505.86 | 5,445 | 0.125 | 0.0506 |
| 1 Acre (killa) | 4,046.86 | 43,560 | 1 | 0.4047 |
| 1 Hectare | 10,000 | 107,639 | 2.471 | 1 |
| 1 Murabba (25 acres) | 101,171 | 1,089,000 | 25 | 10.117 |
Reading it the other way is just as useful. One hectare is 19.77 kanals or about 395 marlas. One acre is 0.4047 hectares. And if you already have a figure in square feet, divide by 43,560 for acres or by 272.25 for marlas. You can check any of these instantly in the land area converter, which sits alongside the rest of the soil and land tools.
Bigha Size by Region: The Table Nobody Gives You
Because bigha is set by local custom rather than by statute, the only honest answer to “how many acres is a bigha” is “where are you standing?” These are the figures in common revenue use. Values are rounded and local practice can still differ village to village, so confirm against your own record of rights.
| Region | 1 Bigha in Square Meters | In Acres | Acres to Bigha |
| Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh | 809 | 0.200 | 5.00 bigha per acre |
| Punjab and Haryana (India) | 843 | 0.208 | 4.80 bigha per acre |
| Uttar Pradesh (kachcha bigha) | 843 | 0.208 | 4.80 bigha per acre |
| Madhya Pradesh | 1,115 | 0.276 | 3.63 bigha per acre |
| West Bengal, Assam, Bangladesh | 1,338 | 0.331 | 3.02 bigha per acre |
| Gujarat | 1,619 | 0.400 | 2.50 bigha per acre |
| Rajasthan (kachcha bigha) | 1,619 | 0.400 | 2.50 bigha per acre |
| Uttar Pradesh (pucca bigha) | 2,529 | 0.625 | 1.60 bigha per acre |
| Bihar | 2,529 | 0.625 | 1.60 bigha per acre |
| Rajasthan (pucca bigha) | 2,529 | 0.625 | 1.60 bigha per acre |
| Nepal (Terai) | 6,773 | 1.674 | 0.60 bigha per acre |
Notice that a Bihar bigha and a Gujarat bigha differ by more than 50 percent. If you farm near a state border, or buy seed from a dealer across one, this table pays for itself the first time you use it.
How to Convert Land Units by Hand
You only need one habit: turn whatever you have into square meters, then divide. Every conversion below follows from that.
- Square meters to acres: divide by 4,047.
- Square meters to hectares: divide by 10,000.
- Acres to hectares: multiply by 0.4047. Hectares to acres: multiply by 2.471.
- Acres to kanals: multiply by 8. Acres to marlas: multiply by 160.
- Marlas to acres: divide by 160. Kanals to hectares: multiply by 0.0506.
- Bigha to acres: find your regional bigha in square meters from the table above, multiply by the number of bighas, then divide by 4,047.
Worked example. You hold 6 bighas in Bihar. That is 6 multiplied by 2,529, which is 15,174 square meters. Divide by 4,047, and you have 3.75 acres, which is also 1.517 hectares, 30 kanals or 600 marlas. Every input decision from here uses 3.75 acres.
How to Measure Your Land Area: Three Methods
Knowing conversions is half the job. You still need a reliable area to start from, and the right method depends on the shape of your plot and what you need the number for.
Method 1: Tape Measure for Regular Plots
For square and rectangular fields, nothing beats a steel tape. It is cheap, repeatable and needs no signal.
- Measure the length of one side in meters with a steel measuring tape, keeping the tape taut and level.
- Measure the width of the adjacent side in meters.
- Multiply length by width to get the area in square meters.
- Divide by 4,047 for acres, or by 10,000 for hectares.
Example: a field 90 meters long and 45 meters wide covers 90 multiplied by 45, or 4,050 square meters. Divide by 4,047, and you have almost exactly one acre.
For an irregular plot, split it into triangles and rectangles on paper, measure each piece, and add the areas. The area of a triangle is half the base multiplied by the height. Four or five simple shapes will get you within a percent or two of the truth, which is close enough for input planning.
One point that trips people up on sloping land: always measure horizontal distance, not distance along the slope. Revenue area and rainfall both fall on the horizontal plane, so a tape laid along a slope overstates your true area.
Method 2: GPS Measurement With a Smartphone
For large or awkwardly shaped fields, walking the boundary with a phone is faster and usually more accurate than a tape. Free apps such as GPS Fields Area Measure work on both Android and iOS, and Google Maps can measure area from satellite view if the boundary is visible. Agricultural apps often report directly in acres and kanals, which saves a conversion.
Consumer phone GNSS is typically accurate to within 3 to 5 meters, and newer dual-frequency handsets do better. That error is proportionally larger on small plots, so a two marla kitchen garden is not a GPS job. Walk the boundary slowly, hold the phone at chest height away from your body, stay out from under tree canopy and away from tall walls, and record the perimeter twice. If the two runs disagree by more than about 3 percent, walk it again.
Method 3: The Official Record (Fard or Jamabandi)
In Pakistan every agricultural parcel has an official record of rights called a fard or jamabandi, which states the area in kanals and marlas. You can pull it from the Punjab Land Records Authority service centers and portal, or from your local patwari for parcels not yet digitized. Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan run their own land record systems.
This is the number that counts for a sale, a mortgage, an inheritance split, a crop insurance claim or a subsidy application. Your tape reading is a working figure. The fard is the legal one. When the two disagree, and they often do by a few marlas, get the parcel demarcated officially rather than arguing with the paperwork.
One more distinction that costs farmers real money. Gross area is the whole parcel. Net cultivable area excludes watercourses, field bunds, access paths, tube well pads and tree lines. Fertilizer and seed go on the net area. On a small holding with a wide watercourse, the gap can easily be 8 to 10 percent, and applying gross area rates means you overbuy every single season.
Turning Your Land Area Into Input Doses
This is the payoff. Once your area is settled, every input quantity is one multiplication away. Keep this cheat sheet next to your area figure.
| To convert | Multiply by |
| Kilograms per hectare to kilograms per acre | 0.405 |
| Kilograms per acre to kilograms per hectare | 2.471 |
| Tonnes per hectare to tonnes per acre | 0.405 |
| Liters per hectare to liters per acre | 0.405 |
| Kilograms per acre to kilograms per kanal | 0.125 |
| Kilograms per acre to kilograms per marla | 0.00625 |
| Millimeters of water applied to cubic meters per acre | 4.047 |
Fertilizer
Start with the recommendation and the basis it is written on. If the advice is one 50 kg bag of DAP per acre and you farm 3.5 acres, you need 3.5 bags, or 175 kg. Simple.
Now the conversion case. A research recommendation of 120 kg nitrogen per hectare becomes 120 multiplied by 0.405, or 48.6 kg of nitrogen per acre. Urea carries 46 percent nitrogen, so 48.6 divided by 0.46 gives 105.7 kg of urea per acre, which is a little over two bags. Getting that basis wrong is the two and a half times mistake from the top of this article. Run the numbers through the urea application rate calculator, the DAP fertilizer calculator, or the NPK dosage calculator, and the unit basis is handled for you.
Soil amendments are the same story on a bigger scale, because lime and gypsum rates run into tonnes per acre and a 20 percent area error becomes a truckload. Size them with the lime requirement calculator or the gypsum application calculator.
Seed Rate and Plant Population
Wheat in Punjab is commonly sown at 50 kg per acre. For 2.8 acres, that is 2.8 multiplied by 50, or 140 kg of seed. If your recommendation arrives per hectare, convert first: 125 kg per hectare is 50.6 kg per acre.
Area also drives plant population, which is where yield is actually won or lost. Work out how many plants your acreage should carry with the plant population density calculator, set the geometry with the row and seed spacing calculator, and check the quantity to buy with the seed rate calculator.
Irrigation Water
Water is where area errors get expensive fastest, because you pay for diesel or electricity by the hour. Useful anchor: one millimeter of water over one acre is 4.047 cubic meters, so a 75 mm flood irrigation on one acre needs about 303 cubic meters, or 303,000 liters.
For a 3.5-acre field, that single turn is roughly 1,061 cubic meters, and knowing that tells you how many hours your pump must run. Size the turn with the flood irrigation water calculator, match it to crop demand using the crop water requirement calculator, and if you irrigate from a canal, convert your share with the canal water measurement calculator. Pressurized systems are area-driven too, through the sprinkler irrigation calculator.
Sprays, Costs and Paperwork
Pesticide labels give a rate per acre and a water volume per acre, so both scale with your figure. The spray volume calculator converts tank loads to field coverage so you are not left with half a tank or a bare strip.
Financial planning runs on the same number. Cost per acre multiplied by acres gives your season budget, which is what the crop cost of production calculator and the farm budget planner are built around. Insurance premiums and subsidy entitlements are assessed per acre or per hectare as well, so check yours with the crop insurance premium calculator and the agriculture subsidy calculator.
Five Land Area Mistakes That Cost Farmers Money
In practice, the same handful of errors show up again and again on farm visits and in dealer disputes.
- Mixing hectare rates with acre fields. The costliest error, and a 147 percent overdose. Check the basis on every recommendation before you buy.
- Assuming all bighas are equal. Two neighboring districts can differ by half. Ask which bigha, every time.
- Ignoring the marla standard. A marla of 25 square yards and one of 30.25 square yards are not the same asset. Confirm before signing.
- Using gross area for inputs. Deduct watercourses, bunds and paths, or you overbuy fertilizer and seed all season.
- Measuring along a slope. Slope distance inflates area. Measure the horizontal projection or use GPS, which already reports on the horizontal plane.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I convert square feet to acres?
Divide square feet by 43,560. For example, 21,780 square feet is 21,780 divided by 43,560, which equals 0.5 acres. To go the other way, multiply acres by 43,560.
How many marlas are in an acre?
One acre equals 160 marlas, or 8 kanals of 20 marlas each. This ratio is fixed across Pakistan and does not vary by district, although the square yard value of a single marla can differ in some urban records.
How many acres is one bigha?
It depends entirely on the region. One bigha is 0.2 acres in Uttarakhand, 0.208 acres in Indian Punjab, 0.4 acres in Gujarat, 0.625 acres in Bihar, and 1.674 acres in the Nepal Terai. Always confirm the local bigha before converting.
How do I convert kilograms per hectare to kilograms per acre?
Multiply the per hectare figure by 0.405 or divide it by 2.471. So, 200 kg per hectare is 81 kg per acre. Reverse it by multiplying the per acre figure by 2.471.
Which unit should I use when talking to extension agents in Pakistan?
Use acres for field-level crop management, because extension advice, input rates, and government schemes are almost always written per acre. Switch to hectares when you read research papers, FAO datasets or official statistics.
What is the difference between a bigha and a kanal?
They come from different revenue traditions. A kanal is a fixed Punjab unit equal to one eighth of an acre, or 505.86 square meters. A bigha is a regional unit with no fixed size, ranging from about 809 to 6,773 square meters. Where both are used, clarify the bigha size first.
Is a marla always 272.25 square feet?
In the standard Pakistani system, yes, because a marla is 30.25 square yards. But some older urban records, particularly in parts of Lahore, use a 25 square yard marla of 225 square feet. Check the record of rights rather than assuming.
How accurate is smartphone GPS for measuring farmland?
Consumer phones are usually accurate to within 3 to 5 meters per point, which is fine for fields of an acre or more but proportionally poor on very small plots. Walk the boundary twice and accept the result only if the two readings agree within about 3 percent.
Final Thoughts
Accurate land area calculation is the quietest high-return skill in farming. Get it right and every downstream number, from bags of urea to liters of diesel to your insurance claim, lands where it should. Get it wrong, and you pay for the error in every input, every season, without ever seeing the line item.
Do two things this week. Write your holding down in acres, hectares and square meters so you can meet any recommendation in its own units, and note your net cultivable area separately from the gross figure on your fard. Keep both in your phone.
Then let the tools do the arithmetic. Start with the land area converter, work through the full set of farm calculators, and pair the numbers with practical agronomy in the Foods Farming crop guides.