Belgaun district nestles in the northwestern corner of Karnataka, bordering mainly on Maharashtra but also touching Goa at Belgaun's southwestern corner. Like Kheda and Guntur, Belgaun is primarily a rural district, although it is less densely populated than Kheda or Guntur. Belgaun also is not as prosperous a district as Kheda or even Guntur. Were it not for the bustling trading city of Belgaun, the district's per capita income would be much lower.

Several aspects of the patterns of landownership in this district are noteworthy. The percentage of landless laborers in Belgaun is considerably lower than that in Guntur, about the same as that in Kheda, and close to the national average. Among the landowning population, the number of midsize holders is noteworthy. More than 60 percent of the landholdings are between 1 and 10 hectares (2.5–24.7 acres) each, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the cultivated land. Nearly a third of the landholdings are of less than 1 hectare each, accounting for barely 5 percent of the land. These smallholdings probably are all owner-operated by now, because tenancy decreased sharply in Karnataka after the tenancy reforms implemented under Devraj Urs in the second half of the 1970s. At the top end of the landowning spectrum, there are quite a few large landholdings in Belgaun: More than 25 percent of the land is in holdings of more than 10 hectares (24.7 acres) each, but this land is operated by nearly 5 percent of the landowning population, suggesting that ownership may be less concentrated than in Kheda.