Buying an orchard for sale in Bas-Rhin means stepping into a fruit-growing tradition that never left the Alsatian landscape: damson, mirabelle, cherry, apple and pear trees occupy the Vosges foothills, the valleys and the edges of the villages, both as low trained plantings grown for the fresh market and as standard trees in meadow orchards kept for distilling. Farmers stepping back, agencies specialising in agricultural property and notaries supply this quiet market; the descriptions give the species, the age of the rows, the protection in place and the storage available. Each one also appears in the national inventory of orchards for sale.
What you will find here is what the listings leave out: the level of farmland prices in the department, the areas where plantings remain numerous, how to appraise an orchard before making an offer, the formalities to allow for. Setting up as a farmer follows a different logic, and the white paper « Créer une exploitation agricole » (in French) runs through its legal and funding stages.
Land forms the base of the value of an orchard. Land transaction data does not cover this department (Alsace-Moselle land register), so the figures below are those of the Grand Est region. DVF, the property sales database published by the French tax administration (vineyards excluded), records farmland changing hands in the region at a median of €5,611/ha in 2025, average €7,490/ha, over 1,233 sales. Four sales in five fall between €3,151 and €14,830/ha; the national benchmark is €5,307/ha.
The SAFER benchmark completes the picture: €6,470/ha in 2025 for vacant land and pasture (-2.4% in a year, -5.5% in ten), against a national average of €6,460/ha, with let land trading some 17% below that.
With this kind of property, value is decided above the ground. What counts is the condition and age of the trees, planting density, the soundness of the trellis, the rootstock, hail netting and a regularised water supply, then the post-harvest equipment: grading room, sizer, cold store, sometimes a still. To that add the worth of the business, depending on whether the crop goes to a producer organisation, a distillery or a farm shop. Weigh those elements against our land price observatory, then put the numbers through our financial calculators.
The department holds side by side professional low-trained orchards, trellised, irrigated, often under netting, and a considerable heritage of standard-tree meadow orchards ringing the villages. The first are valued as a production tool: density, varietal consistency, cropping years remaining, scope for mechanisation, cold store capacity. The second are worth mainly their land, their spirit production and their place in the landscape, and call for a great deal of pruning before any marketable crop can be expected. Confusing the two when making an offer leads to overpaying for trees whose restoration will cost more than replanting.
On a fruit-growing holding in Bas-Rhin, the processing workshop often shifts the balance of the deal. Distilling, juice, drying, selling at the gate: each activity brings its own customers, approvals and equipment, but also demands working hours outside the season. Where the property includes an old Alsatian house, outbuildings and land, insist on three separate valuations, because character buildings follow the local residential market, not the agricultural land market.
The Vosges foothills, from the Pays de Hanau down past Obernai and Barr, keep slopes where fruit trees alternate with vines on well-drained, well-exposed ground. The Villé valley, long identified with cherries and kirsch, still concentrates plantings and family distilleries. To the north, the Outre-Forêt and the Wissembourg area retain wide belts of meadow orchards around the villages. The Kochersberg and the Ried, more given over to arable and vegetables, carry more scattered fruit acreage, while the Bruche valley combines trees with grassland.
Pressure on land is far from uniform. Around the Strasbourg conurbation and along the wine-growing foothills, competition from other uses lifts prices and makes single-block parcels rare. Towards the north of the department and in the Vosges valleys, supply is more affordable but comes with fragmented holdings. In every case, proximity to Strasbourg and to the German market remains a solid commercial advantage for direct selling.
As elsewhere, the deal requires an authorisation to farm under the structures control and is exposed to SAFER's pre-emption right; the local peculiarity is the Alsace-Moselle legal regime that governs parts of tenancy law and the land register, so the legal position of each parcel deserves close reading. Have rights of way identified, since old fragmented holdings carry many of them, and check whether a land consolidation scheme is under way. Finally, question the seller about the history of sharka and fire blight.
Look hard at water: abstraction from the aquifer or from a watercourse must be authorised, and summer restrictions have been repeated in recent seasons. Check the sprayer test certificate, the spraying distances from dwellings, which bite hard when the orchard adjoins a village, and the state of the refrigeration plant. If distilling forms part of the business, the home-distiller position and the status of the still should be clarified before signature, along with any contractual commitment to a cooperative.
Sellers, rural estate agencies and notarial offices lodge their files here as handovers come up. In this department, sales tend to be arranged over the winter, before pruning starts again, and a fruit farm already equipped finds a buyer quickly, whether its core is an apple orchard or a block of cherries. Refine by planted area, by budget or by training system, save an alert to follow new entries, and extend the search to orchards for sale in Grand Est.
