I have sent you a private message lianne.
Quite honestly I think the only way to be sure of steering totally clear of these issues is, if you’re not going to farm, steer clear of buying agricultural land. Farmland is for farming. To try and put it in perspective, the purpose behind the laws is to protect France’s agriculture, which I don’t think anyone would disagree with in theory, especially Brits who have seen so much of England’s farmland turn into housing estates and the farming sector has shrunk almost out of existence in some areas. But now and again there is a perception that the rules aren’t working and the agricultural sector is losing too much land to speculators. So then, the rules are tightened, and unfortunately some people do get caught between the old rules and the new ones.
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Round here they dislike people who buy a property with lots of fertile land and let it go back to nature " seems to be the in thing with lots of people" the locals think that it is an awful waste of good land.
You might have better control if you charge a peppercorn amount to rent. To just allow someone to use your land is never a good idea legally as others have suggested. A proper rental agreement with terms and conditions as to stocking density, boundary and fence maintenance, repairing any damage the livestock might cause is absolutely vital.
I know the UK isn’t France, but here there are squatters rights. If someone is allowed to use someone else’s land with their knowledge, after a certain amount of time, they get to own the land. A small amount of rent and a tenancy agreement on paper, prevents this from happning.
It doesn’t sound like you are a rural person, that’s not an insult, but land is money and it’s not like offering someone the use of your empty garage to store an old car until they get sorted. You give someone the use of several hectares and I doubt you will get them back. Be a bit more savvy, trust nobody and it won’t all end in tears. 
But then using that law, anyone who rents a house can simply claim it as theirs?
“It’a already nicely cut up and added to his enormous stack. Just needs to be moved to our side”
Perhaps you need to get your wheelbarrow out and start moving it yourself or else he might simply assume you are not really interested in it.
Never, ever allow anyone to rent your land in France. Above all any farmers !!
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as a land hungry old country dweller I have to agree. Sadly UK laws are rubbish on this aspect. Like when ‘townies’ bought a place up the road with 3 acres of good land. They had 3 acres of lawn. That land could have been in production and supported several families. Eventually they sold part of it as a building plot. Now there are 2 houses, each with an acre and a hald of lawn… Makes me hopping mad. I’ve always felt there should be laws about city folks moving into a rural area and buying up places with more than an acre and then simply letting it lie fallow.
“Round here they dislike people who buy a property with lots of fertile land and let it go back to nature " seems to be the in thing with lots of people” the locals think that it is an awful waste of good land."
That attitude prevails everywhere , including the UK. Land for growing food is a finite thing. In my own area, we had an influx of Townies from London, buying up cheap (compared to London) property, thinking they’d like to be landowners, and then simply either letting the land go wild, overgrown with stinging nettles and brambles, or having several acres of lawn, or thinking they want to play at farmers and getting a variety of animals, overstocking, until several die from lack of knowledge, when they get rid of everything, sell up and move back to ‘civilisation’, nice clean tarmac and a police presence when there are problems.
You’ll find that us yokels will have the same attitude to townies buying up places with land and then not utilising the land; all the world over.
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I concur.
About 9 years ago we looked over a property we were interested in buying (from and English lady, I have to add) who had separated from her husband and as part of her ‘settlement’ she acquired the house and land we were looking at.
As it happens we walked away (not sure now of the reasons tbh) we kept contact with her.
We learned some time later that she had managed to sell the property and land and when it came to finalising the deal, she learnt that her estranged husband (who never lived in the place) had allowed a local farmer to keep his cattle on the land and he paid a small amount of money for the privilege by cheque.
Well, you can probably guess what is coming next. The farmer found out about the impending sale and sought compensation for the loss of the facility (in fact, not that it seemed significant oat the time, he visited the Marie at the same time as we did enquiring about the ownership…)
The seller had to give in and it cost her a lot of money to buy the farmer out of the agreement. Money she cold ill-afford.
A salutary lesson learned.
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Pam actually I’m very much a rural person I grew up on a farm and have lived in rural places most of my life including the very remote top end of the Isle of Skye, where trust me winters really are bleak, and farming is hard. Also my family have been in farming and working the land for many years. My brother runs a horticultural wholesale vegetable business. My sister is a manager of a garden centre. As is her daughter. My mum and dad are retired farmers, and I am a qualified landscape gardener who has two allotments and so your assumptions about me are a little squed!
My suggestion in regard to potentially allowing the farmer to graze the land was because I am not planning to make a permanent move to France for 4 years due to personal fiscal reasons that a four year plan works for. The idea was just to keep the fields grazed and healthy in the interim period so as not to become fallow. We very much plan to use the land ourselves when we get there for a small holding so it will be in full agricultural use. Allowing the farmer to use it as he does now with the current owner seemed a good idea at the time as he is our only neighbour so felt it was a good will gesture. I know differently now that the idiosyncraties of French rural life are different and will take a while to learn. But I do actually understand the value of land hence why I’m keen to now protect it.
I know the square root of sod all about running a small-holding in France but I do know that it has come up on the forum previously
I guess the advice is as good today as it was last year.
maraîchers - market gardeners… do well in rural France. There is an ever-growing demand for bio vegetable/fruit/salad stuffs… you name it…
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Can gaurantee that you will have a letter from them within 6 months of buying a property with enough land to fill their criteria, they the MSA are Billions of euros in debt to the government and are always looking for pre re-tirement land owners to contribute to their funds, it is not funny they have cost us over €40k of contributions since we brought the farm 10 years ago and we did not have a choice,
When friends bought an old farm, they received a Form to complete and asked me to look it over. Now, I cannot tell you what form it was, nor who it was from…
But it did ask what the land was to be used for.
Between us, we had a good read and they put the equivalent of Private Leisure/Garden against all the parcels… Their response/situation was never queried.
They have since used the land for sheep, ducks, chickens, fruit/veg… but only in a private capacity…
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Brian you are wrong. Most of the posters who use this forum regularly thoroughly enjoy living in France but they also have experience of doing so and know the pitfalls. I have only lived here full time for five years but in that time I have witnessed enough people who have thought that they know better and avoided good advice that might have been considered negative find out the hard way that life here is not exactly like life in the UK with the thermostat turned up. I chose to live here because it suits my life style; I have just come home after enjoying an afternoon drive through the beautiful local countryside with my closest friend who just happens to be a French neighbour. I’m now sitting in front of my woodburner in my seventeenth century stone house. At other times of year I take part in motoring activities in my Vintage, not classic or youngtimer, car, sail in the boat I keep on the coast and travel around as much as possible enjoying the different countryside and cuisine that France provides. Apart for a weekend in Germany I haven’t been out of the Hexagon for over three years. I’m sorry that you can’t differentiate between giving advice and enjoying living. Perhaps you would to prefer to find out from experience that your house will cost more to renovate than you expect, entering into naïeve land leasing schemes with local farmers can end in tears or that the French tax authorities will not consider working from your French home online with British customers is working in thecUK and therefore taxable there or any of the others often repeated mistakes that people make? Take the advice, reflect upon it but please don’t suggest that the people providing that advice hate living in their chosen homes.
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No Brian, living in France is not all bad, in fact it’s pretty good. In your case, from what you’ve said, you’re not planning on making an income from the land so you’ll not be treading on anyone’s toes. It’s when you start treading on toes that the problems can start - and the sad thing there is that in most cases it never was the intention.
It’s like anything else - good news isn’t news and people don’t tend to talk about it. Problems are news so they get talked about.
Hope your purchase is hassle free.
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Brian it’s not all bad.
I think that we who have been here some time are just posting about things that maybe have happened/could happen to us.
I love France, it’s not to say that there aren’t any problems, those can be found in any country.
For me, and I have lived here a long time, each morning when I open my curtains and see all the fields, trees and animals around it’s like a special type of magic.
My French partner, who has his own house and garden, has now, by choice, stopped his elevage of volailles. He had over 130 animals, including many local specialities of hens. He had ducks, geese, pheasants, hens, guinea fowl, turkeys, pigeons et al.
These were for eating and also for the eggs.
By choice he has also reduced his garden produce.
My posts about 'do not under any circumstances let a farmer use your land 'have come from the experiences we have had here. I don’t want anyone to go through what we did so it’s advice. Whether you choose to follow is up to you.
The price you have paid and the vision you have of how you can renovate your property and land is great. No one wants to put a dampner on your dreams.
You have experience and the know how of roofing and other renovations. You also are an expert on gardening and land maintenace.
That’s all good, it’s all positive, we just don’t want you to go stumbling into any unforseen problems.
Live your dream, I have , and so have countless others, but do be aware that the rules and regulations here are not like in the UK.
Above all, you have so much to look forward too, so many exciting plans, do enjoy them but do also heed a little bit the advice of others who sometimes ‘have the T shirt’ 
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Thank you I do and will continue to value the advice given by all and have already acted on it as in the case of stopping the notaire writing the contract to the farmer for the use of the land. I was being slightly tongue in cheek in my previous post regarding there being no good news which caused unintended offence which I apologise for, so I have removed that post. I do get totally France is a very different country and very bureaucratic at times. And I am learning fast, what that all means in French terms.
I am not naieve or entirely new to this kind of rural living where people don’t speak the same language. When I lived among the farming community on the trotternish peninsular in the Isle of Skye it really was not dissimilar to France, very close nit family orientated where you had to make an effort to fit it and learn their ways. They all spoke fluent gealic rather than English so had to learn a new language their to to fit in. It was like stepping back 50 years but in a good way.
Fast forward I later became a career civil servant and have work in facilities management in 10 Downing Street, Cabinet Office Finance and now work in the FM sector in the MOD so I do understand bureaucracy in its many forms, I just need to learn the French form of it I get that.
I think my point is sometimes assumptions are made about the poster on forums and these aren’t always right. The joys of the written word are always fraught with danger. I knew that a forum called survivefrance was not going to be all about how great it is. I guess my point I was making in the previous post I deleted was it would be good to hear some of the positive encouraging statements and positive experiences of living in France to alongside the good advice. As you have done above, that’s all I meant and I’m sorry if my previous post ham fistedly put that across wrongly.
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