Problem
Farm holdings are small and have been getting smaller
- National
The Agriculture Census 2015-16 put the average operational holding at 1.08 hectares, down from 1.15 hectares in 2010-11, with small and marginal holdings (below two hectares) making up about 86 per cent of all holdings. The Reserve Bank of India's 2019 working group, citing the same census, recorded that these holdings together operated 47.34 per cent of the operated area. NSO's 2019 survey found about 70 per cent of agricultural households possessed less than one hectare (34.2 per cent between 0.01 and 0.40 ha, 35.6 per cent between 0.40 and 1.00 ha). In March 2026 the Ministry of Agriculture was still citing the 2015-16 census for holding size; later census results are not used in this entry. Evidence confidence: High.
1 sub-problem within this
Who is responsible
- Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare — Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare · Ministry or DepartmentConducts the Agriculture Census.
- State Revenue Departments · State GovernmentLand is a State subject.
Evidence and sources
- Record Food and Horticulture output amid Declining Average Landholdings — reply in Rajya Sabha · Official statementMinistry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, 27 March 2026. Agriculture Census 2015-16: average operational holding 1.08 ha against 1.15 ha in 2010-11.
- Livelihood of Farmers — reply in Lok Sabha · Official statementMinistry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, 14 March 2023. About 58.3% of rural households report agriculture as their main income source (NSS 77th round); small and marginal holders about 86% of operational holders (Agriculture Census 2015-16).
- NSS Report No. 587: Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India, 2019 — PIB release · Official data or datasetMinistry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 10 September 2021. NSS 77th round, rural India, agricultural year July 2018–June 2019. Gives average monthly income by source, indebtedness and holding-size distribution.
- Report of the Internal Working Group to Review Agricultural Credit · Government documentReserve Bank of India, 13 September 2019 (Chair: M. K. Jain). Uses NAFIS 2016-17 and Agriculture Census 2015-16. Covers non-institutional credit, tenant farmers, regional disparity, crop vs allied credit, Kisan Credit Card coverage, loan waivers and computerisation of land records by state.
Connected problems
- Contributes to Sowing, weeding and harvesting remain largely manual across most cropsThe Government promotes custom hiring centres specifically to offset the adverse economies of scale of small holdings.
Alongside this
Tenant farmers and sharecroppers mostly farm under informal leases that shut them out of institutional credit and insurance
NITI Aayog's Expert Committee on land leasing (2016) found that most state governments have legally banned or restricted agricultural leasing, and that these laws have forced tenancy to become informal, insecure and inefficient: informal tenants "do not have legal sanctity and access to institutional credit, insurance and other support services". The Reserve Bank of India's 2019 working group on agricultural credit likewise recorded that tenant farmers, sharecroppers and oral lessees struggle to get institutional credit without a legal framework or records of their cultivation. The Committee's Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act is a model for states; how many have adopted it is not established here, and the number of informal tenants is not reliably measured. Evidence confidence: High for the exclusion from formal support; low for its scale.
Village maps lag far behind the digitised text of land records
By October 2024 the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme reported about 95 per cent of rural land records computerised, covering over 6.26 lakh villages, but only 68.02 per cent of cadastral maps digitised nationally, and 87 per cent of sub-registrar offices integrated with land records. The programme has been extended to 2025-26. Progress has been uneven between states: the Reserve Bank of India's 2019 working group, using Department of Land Resources data, listed Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland among those with less than half their land records computerised at the time. Digitising a record does not make it accurate on the ground, which this entry does not establish. Evidence confidence: High for programme progress; low for record accuracy.
Do you support action on this problem?