Hectare, a commonly used unit of the metric system that is used to measure land and plots all across the world, goes by the symbol ha. Invented in the year 1795, the term hectare is a conjunction of the Latin words area and hect.
A hectare is equal to 10,000 square meters and 2.471 acres in the British Imperial System. A 100 ha is equal to one square kilometre. Consequently, a farm with 200 ha of fields has 2 square kilometers of fields. To give the understanding of the area a visual perspective, it would be better to equate a hectare with a football field. It is about the size of a European football field.
1 Ha | 2.47 acres |
1 Ha | 10,000 square meters |
1 Ha | 107, 639 sqft |
1 Ha | 11,959 square yards |
1 Ha | 100 ares |
A metric unit of square measure, the term hectare is derived by adding the standard metric prefixes to the original base unit of area, the are. An are is equal to 100 square metres while a hectares is equal to 100 ares. Even though the are is the primary metric unit of land measurement, the hectare has become more common. Also note here that while acre is also widely used to measure land across the world, the hectare and the acre are different in the sense that the acre is a unit of area and hectare is a metric unit of area.
Counted among the most commonly used land measurement units by the farming communities across countries, both these units are used to measure large areas of land.
A metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides, hectare is used in the measurement of land across the world. Although not a unit of SI, hectare is the only named unit of area that is accepted for use with SI units. The International Committee for Weights and Measures has classified hectare as a 'non-SI unit accepted for use with the international system of units'.
Among the geographies where this land measurement unit is most commonly used are Australia, Burma, Canada, the European Union, India, the US, the UK, etc.
The hectare has its exact equivalent in Argentina by the name manzana, in China by the name gong qing, in Iran by the name jerib, in the Netherlands by the name bunder and in Turkey by the name djerib.