Converting to Organic Farming in France: Durations, Rules and Traps of the Transition Years

Conversion is the entry airlock to organic farming: two to three years during which you apply EU regulation 2018/848 in full — inputs, practices, inspections — without yet being able to sell under the label. It is a well-charted period in regulatory terms, demanding economically, and strategically decisive: run well, it takes you to the certificate with your cash flow intact; poorly prepared, it is the leading cause of dropping out along the way.

The durations: 2 years, 3 years, and a few nuances

The regulation sets conversion durations by type of production:

Production	Conversion duration
Annual crops (cereals, field vegetables…)	2 years before sowing the crop that will be harvested as organic
Grassland and forage	2 years before use in organic animal feed
Perennial crops (orchards, vines, soft fruit…)	3 years before a harvest that can be sold as organic
Animal production	Specific durations by species and product

Two mechanisms can adjust these durations. Retroactive recognition: if you can prove that a plot received no prohibited products during the preceding period (fallow land, natural grassland, documented environmental commitments), part of the journey can be validated on file. Conversely, contamination or a non-compliant practice during conversion can reset the clock on the plots concerned. In both cases, your certification body examines the file, evidence in hand.

The starting point, meanwhile, is simple: conversion runs in principle from the engagement signed with the certification body, once the activity has been notified to the Agence Bio. The upstream steps — notification, choosing the body, the initial inspection — are covered in our guide to getting organic certification.

During conversion: all the rules already, none of the price yet

From the first day of conversion you are a full organic operator on the obligations side: inputs limited to the permitted lists, crop and livestock registers, traceability, flow separation if part of the farm stays conventional — and at least one inspection per year by your certification body, like any certified operator.

On the revenue side, however, the rule is frustrating: production is sold under conventional conditions. A narrow exception exists for certain plant products, which may carry the words “in conversion to organic farming” under strict conditions — check with your certification body before building a sales pitch on it, as the labelling formalism is precise.

This economic scissor — organic costs, conventional prices — is compounded by the agronomic learning curve. The orders of magnitude are documented: the reference study by Seufert, Ramankutty and Foley published in Nature in 2012 (“Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture”) measures organic yields on average below conventional ones, with gaps that vary widely by crop, soil and practice (see the study). The good news comes from another study: the analysis by Crowder and Reganold in PNAS (2015) shows that once the organic price premium is secured, the profitability of organic systems significantly exceeds conventional farming (see the study). The whole strategy of conversion is about crossing the valley between those two realities.

Funding the crossing

Three levers structure the financing plan of a conversion:

• Conversion aid (CAB) under the EU Common Agricultural Policy: a 5-year commitment, per-hectare and per-year amounts that vary by crop type, requested through the CAP file. This is the backbone of the system — align your engagement calendar with the CAP campaign so as not to lose a year.
• The French organic tax credit, once you meet the organic revenue condition (at least 40% of revenue) — which generally happens at the end of conversion or after.
• Regional and local support, varying by territory.

The amounts, conditions and combination traps of these schemes are detailed in our article on the price of organic certification and the support available. One cross-cutting piece of advice: cost the conversion as an investment project, with a year-by-year cash-flow forecast — that is exactly what your banker and accountant will look at.

The classic traps of the conversion period

• Delaying the signature with the certification body. As long as the engagement is not signed, conversion does not run: every month of drift postpones the first organic sale.
• Neglecting retroactive evidence. Well-documented plot histories can shorten the road; they are built before the engagement, not after.
• Under-engineering flow separation on mixed farms: one poorly identified shared storage area between in-conversion and conventional plots is enough to downgrade whole lots.
• Forgetting that inspections are already real. The annual inspection applies from conversion onwards; registers kept “when we get time” are paid for at the first audit.
• Discovering labelling rules at the last minute: the “in conversion” wording, then the EU leaf logo and the certifier’s code at the moment of going fully organic, follow a precise formalism to anticipate with your certification body.

Note, finally, that the logic of “applying the standard before reaping its rewards” is not specific to organic farming: it is the principle of any third-party certification, whether a quality management system or, in the field of vocational training, France’s national quality framework whose 32 indicators we detail elsewhere.

Take action

Conversion is won before it starts: an optimised engagement date, retroactive evidence gathered, a three-year cash plan and aid files aligned with the CAP campaign. To place this step within the whole journey — notification, inspections, labelling —, see our full guide to organic certification in France and download the free ebook that goes with it.