Hectares to Tareas Converter

One hectare is 15.9 Dominican tareas — the unit farms, deeds and crop statistics still use across the country.

Conversion table

Area	In tareas
0.5	7.9509 ta
1	15.9018 ta
1.5	23.8527 ta
2	31.8036 ta
2.5	39.7545 ta
3	47.7054 ta
4	63.6072 ta
5	79.509 ta
6	95.4107 ta
7	111.3125 ta
8	127.2143 ta
9	143.1161 ta
10	159.0179 ta
12	190.8215 ta
15	238.5269 ta

🌱 The numbers that matter

1 hectare15.9018 tareas
1 tarea628.86 m²
1 tarea0.1554 acres
1 tarea30 × 30 varas

Working with tareas

A tarea is a square 30 varas on a side. With the Dominican vara at 0.835905 m, that is 25.08 m per side and 628.86 m² of surface.
Sixteen tareas is almost exactly a hectare — 15.9, to be precise — which makes the mental conversion easy in the field.
Dominican agricultural statistics report planted and harvested area in tareas; international bodies report in hectares. Convert before comparing any yield.
The word tarea is used elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world with different values. Always confirm you mean the Dominican tarea of 628.86 m².

A square of thirty varas

The Dominican tarea is not an arbitrary number of square metres: it is the area of a square measuring thirty varas on each side. The vara used in the Dominican Republic is 0.835905 metres, so thirty of them come to 25.077 metres, and squaring that gives 628.86 square metres. That is why the conversion to the metric system produces an awkward figure while the traditional definition is perfectly tidy — the unit was built from a length that surveyors could lay out with a cord, long before anyone measured land in metres.

Why the tarea survives in Dominican farming

Because it is the right size for the work. A hectare is too large to talk about a plot of rice or a stand of plantain, and a square metre is far too small; the tarea, at roughly a quarter of an acre, matches how land is actually divided, rented and planted. Deeds, rural land prices and the country's own agricultural statistics all use it, so a farmer negotiating a lease and the ministry publishing planted area are speaking the same language. The friction appears only at the border, where export buyers and international datasets speak hectares.

Traditional land units across the region

Dominican tarea: 628.86 m², a square of 30 varas.
Puerto Rican cuerda: 3,930.4 m², a square of 75 varas — six times a tarea.
Central American manzana, used in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala: 6,987.3 m², a square of 100 varas.
Colombian fanegada: 6,400 m², a square of 80 metres.
Argentine and Uruguayan cuadra: 17,500 m² in its most common form.
All of them descend from the vara, which is why none of them is a round number of square metres.

Practical notes for buying or renting land

Rural land is priced per tarea; urban lots are priced per square metre. Crossing between them is where errors happen.
A titled and surveyed parcel states its area in square metres in the modern registry, even when the sale is talked about in tareas.
Sixteen tareas is a convenient working figure for a hectare, but the exact number is 15.9018 — a 0.6% difference that matters on a large holding.
Yields quoted per tarea multiply by 15.9 to become per-hectare figures comparable with international data.
Ask whether a stated area is surveyed or estimated. Traditional measurements by cord and pace can differ from a modern survey by several per cent.
Sloping land measures the same in plan view as flat land, but plants far fewer trees — area alone never tells the whole story.

Worked examples

Farms and yields

A 10 hectare farm

10 × 15.9018 = 159.02 tareas
10 ha = 100,000 m²
In acres: 24.7

10 ha = 159 tareas

A yield of 50 quintales per hectare

50 ÷ 15.9018 = 3.14 quintales per tarea
The per-tarea figure is what a Dominican farmer works with
The per-hectare figure is what FAO datasets publish

50 per hectare = 3.14 per tarea

Frequently Asked Questions

How many tareas are in a hectare?

15.9018 tareas. A hectare is 10,000 square metres and a Dominican tarea is 628.86 square metres, so the ratio follows directly. Sixteen is close enough for conversation and 0.6% out, which is worth correcting on anything above a few hectares.

How big is a tarea?

628.86 square metres, which is a square roughly 25 metres on each side. It comes to about a sixteenth of a hectare, or 0.155 acres. That size is why it survives: it matches the way rural plots are actually divided and worked.

Why is a tarea 628.86 square metres?

Because it is a square of thirty varas. The Dominican vara measures 0.835905 metres, so thirty varas is 25.077 metres, and that squared is 628.86 square metres. The metric number looks arbitrary only because the unit was defined in a different system.

Is the Dominican tarea the same as elsewhere?

No, and the name is genuinely ambiguous across the Spanish-speaking world. Within the Caribbean alone the Puerto Rican cuerda is 3,930 m² and the Central American manzana nearly 7,000 m². When a document says tarea without qualification in the Dominican Republic, it means 628.86 m².

How do I convert a crop yield from tareas to hectares?

Multiply the per-tarea figure by 15.9018. A harvest of 4 quintales per tarea is 63.6 per hectare. This is the step that makes Dominican agricultural statistics comparable with FAO data or with an export buyer's expectations.

Are land titles in the Dominican Republic in tareas or metres?

Modern surveyed titles state the area in square metres, because the registry works metrically. Tareas remain the language of negotiation, rural pricing and agricultural reporting, so the same parcel is routinely described both ways in the same transaction.