There are more than 608 million farms in the world and more than 90 percent of them (more than 550 million) can be considered family farms as they are run by an individual or a family and rely primarily on family labour. Estimates suggest that family farms occupy around 70–80 percent of farm land and produce about 80 percent of the world’s food in value terms.

These family farms must not be confused with small farms (those smaller than 2 hectares), which, according to our estimates, account for 84 percent of all farms worldwide, but operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land and produce roughly 36 percent of the world’s food.

At the other extreme, the largest one percent of farms in the world (those larger than 50 hectares) operate more than 70 percent of the world’s farmland; this is indicative of significant concentration of farmland among larger farms.

Findings also show that, by and large, there has been a reduction in average farm size in low- and middle-income countries and the opposite is seen for high-income countries over the period 1960–2010. Smaller farms operate a far greater share of farmland in lower income regions than in higher income countries, suggesting the share of farmland managed by small farms diminishes as average income levels rise. However, there is an apparent “reemergence” of small farms in countries whose share of the world’s agricultural area is significant and where land is highly concentrated among large farms. A hypothesis is that there may be a rise in small-scale farms producing food that is consumed close to the source; for example, the role of local farmer’s markets in supplying the urban elite may be increasing.

The evidence presented bears important policy implications. The policies needed for the largest farms in the world are most certainly different from those needed for resource poor and land-scarce farms in the developing world.

It is imperative that we refrain from interchangeably using the terms family farms and small farms. It would be helpful to distinguish among different types of family farms, including distinguishing among family farms of different sizes.

Looking at all types of farms will be critical to achieving not only poverty eradication (SDG 1), but also zero hunger (SDG 2), expose stark inequalities across farms so that they can be tackled (SDG 10), and inform interventions to create a better enabling environment to achieve higher levels of economic productivity and economic growth (SDG 8) as well as more sustainable production patterns (SDG 12).