But the rapid increase of India's population since independence means that, over generations, large farmlands have been divided into smaller plots to share between brothers, leaving each Maratha son with less land to farm than his father had.
In general, large farmlands have been leased to financially stable and experienced farmers who had worked in state farms and cooperatives (shirkats-in Uzbek).
On the one hand, this could be linked to the fact that some households may not want to experiment with new technologies on large farmlands because of uncertainty.
Therefore, the rural households who owned large farmlands have more capacities to cope with climate change risks (O'Brien et al. 2004; Wisner et al. 2004; Temesgen 2010; Barungi and Maonga 2011).
The Garden State Preservation Trust, created to disburse $1 billion over the next decade to preserve a million acres of open space has approved $55 million in farmland purchases, the largest farmland purchase made so far.
Last summer saw the largest farmland investment deal in recent years, when the Co-operative sold off almost 40,000 acres, including 15 farms and 100 residential properties, to the Wellcome Trust for a whopping £249m.
The release of details about the largest farmland purchase in state history, including appraisals showing how the purchase price was reached, is under consideration by the state attorney general's office.
The largest farmland deal of its kind in the world at that time, it unraveled in just a few months and destroyed Daewoo's "social license to operate" in Madagascar.
Several empirical works indicated that owning larger farmlands provide more opportunities to cultivate more crops and yield though it is noted that labor availability and financial capital affect the reality of how much land can be cultivated.
Even after World War II, Rye Brook was a sparsely populated area of large estates, farmland and open space.
