If you aren’t 150 per cent committed to working very hard 365 days of the year, don’t do it.’This is the advice of Mike Longhurst, who moved to central France with his wife Sue, to set up a horse- and llama-breeding farm.
Sue had been running a similar operation in Wales, Mike helping when his job as an IT security consultant permitted – which wasn’t often.‘We realised that if ever our ideal lifestyle was going to happen, we’d need a lot more land to grow the business to a point where we no longer had to rely on my income,’ says Mike.
The high price of land in the UK persuaded them to consider moving abroad and, after a month’s research, they settled on France, though Sue had only ‘school’ French and Mike virtually none.
‘The logic behind our decision was that the climate was well suited to what we wanted to breed, the French government strongly supports its farming community and property and land prices are very reasonable.There were no rose-tinted spectacles, no visions of sipping wine and eating cheese while basking in the sunshine; we realised
that this would be very hard work.’
In fact, the work started long before they left Wales in January 2005.‘We carried out six months of intensive research into just about everything regarding living and farming in France. Most of the information came from asking questions on [internet] forums and visiting French agriculture websites.
‘We also compiled a comprehensive spreadsheet and estimated income and expenditure for running a farm in France for the first two years, building in a contingency of 40 per cent as we could only guess at the costs of animal foodstuffs, vets’ and farriers’ fees, etc.’
After looking in Poitou-Charentes, Limousin and Aquitaine, the Longhursts settled on Allier in northern Auvergne. ‘We really liked the landscape and the area as a whole,’ Mike says.
They had little help from the 30 or so agents they contacted but finally found a traditional but fully modernised Bourbonnais farmhouse with wooden outbuildings and 12 hectares of good grazing land, for which they paid €242,000
(£168,947).
Existing farmers
A major advantage of the property was that it wasn’t an active farm and so the regional Société d’Aménagement Foncier et d’Établissement Rural (SAFER) was not involved.
The regional SAFER network was set up by the French government half a century ago, when the country’s farmland – the source of most of its income – began to be eroded by industrial and residential development. In order to regulate the sale of large areas of farmland, if the land is to be used for any purpose other than farming, or if there is a
danger of this, the sale can be ‘pre-empted’ and the land offered to existing farmers instead.
Notaires are obliged by law to notify SAFER of any property sale that might result in the discontinuation or break-up of a farming concern via a déclaration d’intention d’aliéner (DIA), on receipt of which SAFER has two months to decide whether to exercise its right of pre-emption (droits de pré-emption).
The minimum area (superficie minimum d’installation [SMI]) of land subject to pre-emption, which is reckoned to be the smallest area on which a family can run a viable multi-stock and crop farm, varies by department but is typically around 25 hectares. SAFER’s concern for long-term stability among the agricultural community means that
people under 30 are favoured; the various grants and subsidies it makes available are almost exclusively for those aged 18 to 30.
SAFER can help you to find and buy a suitable property. Information about the cost of land can be found on its website www.terresdeurope.net/en and properties for sale are listed at www.proprietesrurales.com.
Buying land through SAFER, however, can be a long and complicated process.You must also pay SAFER fees of between 6 and 12 per cent, although you’re exempt from 4.8 per cent land registration tax.To save time and money, you can buy through a notaire or estate agent, but you should check that the land isn’t subject to pre-emption.
Although the owners of the property the Longhursts were interested in weren’t using the land themselves, they were letting it to a local farmer for his cattle. A key stage in the buying process was therefore to check that the farmer was willing to renounce his ‘right’ to use the land, as such rental agreements favour the tenant, who can insist that a new owner continues the arrangement in perpetuity.With the farmer’s (written) agreement, the Longhursts were able to go through with the purchase, through a local estate agent, and register their business with the local chamber of agriculture.
Registration
Chambers of agriculture are a kind of go-between linking the public sector with farmers, though like
SAFER they are interested primarily in protecting national agricultural interests. The Longhursts simply arranged a meeting, during which they had to identify themselves,present proof of ownership, indicate how much land they intended to farm and provide a detailed description of the farming activities they wished to conduct.‘The last part is very important,’ advises Mike, ‘as this forms your contract and you can only carry out the activities listed in your contract.Then we had to specify the type of business (eg sole trader or limited company) and tax structure.’
As with any property purchase, but even more importantly in the case of a business property, you must decide on your legal ownership status before you buy, which can have far-reaching implications regarding tax, social security contributions, liability and inheritance. Not only must you choose between buying as an individual or as a company
but, in the former case, whether your family are to be co-farmers, collaborators, assistants, partners or employees, and in the latter whether to operate independently or as part of a co-operative – of which there are several types.
Needless to say, you should take professional advice at an early stage. Information is also available from the Direction Départementale de l’Agriculture et de la Forêt (DDAF), chambers of agriculture, company formalities centres – Centres de Formalités d’Entreprises (CFE), usually the relevant chamber of agriculture – and rural
economy centres. ‘If you get this wrong,’ warns Mike, ‘it can lose you a lot of money. In our case, the meeting took a total of just 20 minutes and we walked out with confirmation that we were now a legal farm business.’
Insurance
Before you can start operating, however, you must take out professional insurance specifically for agricultural workers: health insurance – assurance maladie des exploitants agricoles (AMEXA) – and accident insurance – assurance accidents des exploitants agricoles (AAEXA).
For these insurances, you have a choice between companies in the Groupement des Assureurs Maladie des Exploitants Agricoles (GAMEX) and the Mutualité Sociale Agricole (MSA), to which you must pay regular contributions (cotisations). An application must be made to your local CFE between one month before and one month after set-up.
‘Registering with the MSA took two months and was done completely by post,’ says Mike.‘The level of payments is determined by the type of farm business you’ve set up, how many family members are involved, how much land you have, etc. A specialist accountant would be able to advise you on this.’
Contributions are not only unavoidable; they’re also high. ‘I would hazard a guess that cotisations are the biggest single factor in the early failure of many start-up businesses by Britons in France,’ says Mike. ‘When you register your farm you immediately start paying cotisations regardless of how much you sell or earn. Our cotisations come to just over €3,500 (£2,443) per year and will rise to around €6,500 (£4,538) after five years.’
In addition, stock-rearing farms must comply with animal identification and health and safety regulations, and all equipment must meet current standards. Further information can be obtained from the Établissement Départemental de l’Élevage (EDE) – ask your chambre d’agriculture (CA) for contact details; Direction Départementale des Services
Vétérinaires – ask your préfecture or local co-operatives.
The Longhursts’ French-speaking friends greatly smoothed their progress through the maze of French legislation.‘We’ve found the staff of both the chambre d’agriculture and the MSA in Allier to be extremely helpful.They’ve provided us with good advice and timely assistance.The rules and regulations in France are generally the same as those in the UK, except that obviously everything is in French, and not being able to read or understand them isn’t a viable excuse for breaching regulations.’
A fresh start
The Longhursts had considerable experience, did their homework thoroughly and contacted the right people at the right time.They were also under no illusions about their new life. ‘At first people would come round at all hours and expect us to stop working and while away the time talking and drinking with them,’ says Mike.‘Then they realised that the farm is a business and running it is a full-time job and not just a pleasant pastime. We quickly started getting orders and we are now taken quite seriously.’
In contrast,Vicki and Cameron Hardie left Cheshire on 19 May this year and moved to Lot-et-Garonne in Aquitaine
with their six-year-old daughter.They bought an unrestored nineteenth century petite ferme with around 6 hectares of grazing land, for €250,000 (£174,532) and were happy to chat to their new neighbours.
‘The question was,’ says Vicki,‘what would we do with the land? Cameron, as a boy, had kept chickens with his father and also dabbled with breeding rabbits.This developed later in his life to breeding dogs.We decided that running a small farm with chickens and sheep would not be difficult and we could make some money from the animals, reduce
costs by growing our own produce, and make the house and farm our full-time jobs.
‘We visited our neighbours. One has a major dairy farm, so we now have supplies of fresh milk. Another has orchards and a large vegetable garden and they give us their surplus crop every week. We’ve reciprocated by baking them English bread and giving them jam we’ve made with their fruit.
‘We’ve also rented out our large barn – to another neighbour for her 15 cows, which, as well as being an additional source of income, will teach us about keeping cattle. A third neighbour ploughs our field so that we can use it as a vegetable plot.You don’t need to make a huge investment in machinery that won’t be used every week.
‘It was a working farm, but SAFER wasn’t involved: our not having a SAFER registration wouldn’t prevent us from developing the farm. There are benefits from SAFER in the way of subsidies, etc. but as with all these things there are pros and cons. SAFER registration doesn’t come without costs. We have no regrets about moving; things are going very much to plan. Our advice to someone coming to France would be: research it well, know what you want to do, make
sure you both want to do it and, when you come to France, become French.’
Useful websites
www.agriculture.gouv.fr
www.agriculture.gouv.fr/spip/IMG/pdf/11534-01.pdf – for an example of an ‘application for permission to farm’ form
www.msa.fr – for insurance Tel: 00 33 (0)1 41 63 70 54
www.paris.apca.chambagri.fr/apca/somadr.htm – for chambers of agriculture
www.proprietes-rurales.com – rural properties for sale
www.safer.fr
www.terresdeurope.net/en – SAFER’s English-language site