Setting up a smallholding in France – Part 1

So you want to move to France?

Following a wealth of media coverage in recent years, about relocating, downshifting or retiring to France for a ‘better’ way of life, I will be taking a look at the realities, and some of the hurdles involved in finding and setting up a smallholding whether for business or purely lifestyle reasons.

First steps across the Channel

If you have only seen France from that now dim school  trip to Bolougne, a romantic date in Paris, or the inside of the booze warehouse at Calais, then you’ve hardly scratched the surface.   The vintage comedy Allo Allo is more like it, although of course La Resistance have now gone!  Its often said but largely true, that atmosphere of rural France is like the british countryside you remember as a child (unless of course your under 25, then you need to ask your mum)

France is a massive country with more than twice the land surface of Britain but the same average population of around 60.4million, and looking entirely from a smallholding perspective you must pick your region carefully if you intend to make any sort of a living from your farm.

From the temperate northwest to the mediterranean  southeast, and two huge mountaineous regions which join Spain at the Pyrenees and the Alps to the east, you can guess that the climate, the soil and the indiginous wildlife make the choices of agriculture quite regional.  It is true to say also, that France has its fair share of cosmopolitan and industrialised regions where property prices for the 9 – 5 population are far in excess of the more rural farming regions.

The geography plays an important part in what grows or thrives best in a region, and so for example, if you intend to raise a variety of familiar crops and livestock you need to find a region with a temperate climate and good soil rather than a searing 40°c summer with little rain.  If on the other hand citrus fruits or olives are your dream then its pointless starting the enterprise in the stunning northern foothills of the Pyrenees.

To many expats reasonable access to their families left in the UK will be essential and the time required to reach them will be forefront in the mind for the first few years.  Of course people emmigrate to far flung lands everyday and rarely see their families from year to year, but they are not Europe, a whole new system of working and lifestyle will be encountered in most cases, whereas in France, or indeed most of Europe you can have the better part of both worlds!

“Land hungry Brits”

The budding smallholder who has been priced out of the UK market in all but the most  isolated of spots, or onto terrain often unsuitable for cultivation, will likely realise three times their expectations provided they are purely driven by the desire for that most prized commodity “land”.

It is possible to buy a habitable property with a few hectares of land (1hectare = 2.4acres) in many lovely regions of France for the same price you would pay for a terraced town house in the home counties.  If you are prepared to renovate, then tatty old barns with masses of derelict land and outbuildings are still to be found for the price of your average brand new 4×4.     However, prices are going up every year in certain regions such as here in Normandy, increases of over 15% have been reported in the last 12 months. Its not only Brits that are moving in, the Belgian, German, Dutch and Parisiens are increasingly keen to relax in the easily accessable rolling countryside of northern France.