Planting a pistachio orchard: timing, spacing, cost and grants

Planting pistachio trees is simple: a hole, a stake, some water. What commits you for twenty years are the decisions made beforehand, when you choose the spacing, the number of males and the type of tree. This article assumes your plot has already passed the climate, soil and water checklist.

When should you plant pistachio trees?

In winter, while the tree is dormant. Bare-root trees go in from November to January, potted trees in February or March. Any later and the tree faces its first summer without established roots, and you have to make up for it with the watering can.

How far apart should pistachio trees be planted?

It all depends on water. The more the orchard is irrigated, the closer you can plant.

Six metres between rows leaves room for harvesting machinery, and an unpruned mature pistachio tree grows taller than six metres. Without irrigation, trees are spaced further apart so that fewer of them share the water in the soil. Nurseries offer layouts ranging from 4 × 5 to 7 × 7 m; the Région Sud grant scheme, for its part, only accepts densities of 150 to 350 trees per hectare.

Where should the male trees go?

The pistachio tree carries its male and female flowers on separate trees, and only the females produce pistachios. Without males nearby there is no harvest: the pollen travels only on the wind.

In Provence, the most commonly quoted rule is one male for every eight females. The classic layout puts a male in the centre of a square of nine trees.

Other figures are quoted: one male for every ten females according to the Chambre d’agriculture de Vaucluse and INRAE, one for every twenty-four in California, on plots of a completely different scale from ours. On a small area, the males can also be grouped along the row facing the prevailing wind. The choice of male varieties matters as much as their number: we come back to this in the article on male and female pistachio trees.

Nursery-grafted trees or grafting in the field?

There are two routes. The first is to buy trees already grafted at the nursery: they cost more, but you know what you are planting. The second is to plant rootstocks and graft them in place one or two summers later: the upfront cost goes down and the risk goes up, because pistachio grafts take poorly in the open field.

The early years of the pistachio revival in Provence were marked by badly grafted trees and by tree losses, as the growers’ union itself admits. The industry now regards the nursery-grafted tree as the normal route, and the regional grant requires it. The techniques are covered in detail in the article on grafting pistachio trees.

How much does it cost to plant a hectare of pistachio trees?

The two sources agree on planting costs and differ sharply on upkeep. We have not found an explanation for the gap. If in doubt, build your financial plan on the higher figures.

The trees themselves account for a large share of the bill. At €25 to €30 a tree, the price recorded in 2022, and 300 trees per hectare, they come to €7,500 to €9,000, half the investment. For comparison, the Chambre d’agriculture de la Drôme puts the cost of establishing a hectare of almond trees at about €21,000.

Then there is the cost that never appears on a quote: five to seven years without a harvest. We go into it in the article on how long the trees take to bear and what they yield.

What grants are there for planting pistachio trees?

The main one is regional. In July 2024 the Région Sud (the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regional council) launched a €100,000 plan to support the pistachio industry. Its planting strand provided for:

• a grant covering 25% of eligible costs, raised to 35% for organic farms or those with HVE, the French High Environmental Value certification;
• eligible costs of between €2,000 and €10,000 excluding VAT per year, which capped the grant at between €2,500 and €3,500 per year;
• a density of 150 to 350 trees per hectare, with trees from a partner nursery;
• membership of the growers’ union France Pistache.

This first version ran until the end of 2024. A new plan for 2027 and 2028 was announced in autumn 2026; we have found only one mention of it in the press. So check the conditions currently in force with the Région before putting an application together.

Elsewhere, support is more scattered. The French government’s Plan agriculture climat Méditerranée (Mediterranean agriculture and climate plan) has given its label to a “Pistache Méditerranéenne” project covering ten départements and Corsica, with no published amount per farm. We have not found any national grant set aside for planting pistachio trees. In other words, public money lightens the bill; it does not fund the project.

At what price does a hectare become profitable?

The French industry puts the break-even point at around €15 per kilo in the shell. Its yield assumption, which it describes as conservative, is 1.5 t of dry in-shell pistachios per hectare from the eighth year, or 800 kg of kernels. On paper, that gives €22,500 of turnover per hectare in a full year.

Three caveats to bear in mind when looking at that figure:

• there is no benchmark contract in France yet, since there was no significant production until 2026;
• Spanish pistachios sell for €7 to €9 per kilo in the shell, half the French break-even price;
• no yield measured in Provence has been published: all the French figures are projections, and the cost-of-production study carried out by the Chambre d’agriculture and the growers’ union has not yet been released.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Pistachio growing practices: a student report, Institut Agro Montpellier for SICA Centrex, 2024, in French.
2. El pistacho (1): requirements, soil, water and year-by-year yields, J. F. Couceiro, IRIAF El Chaparrillo, in Spanish.
3. Café Agro « Fruits à coque », Chambre d’agriculture de Vaucluse and INRAE, 2021, in French.
4. Le pistachier, Pistache en Provence association, in French.
5. Pruning the pistachio tree, CIAG-IRIAF, Vida Rural magazine, 2025, in Spanish.
6. La pistache française sur toutes les lèvres, mais pas encore en bouche, Pleinchamp, 26 April 2024, in French.
7. Fiche pistache bio 2024-2025, Chambre d’agriculture d’Occitanie, in French.
8. Plan régional de soutien à la filière pistache, Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (regional council), in French.
9. La pistache, une jeune filière pleine de promesses, Terre-net, 9 June 2025, in French.
10. Sur la piste des utopistes de la pistache de Provence, Pleinchamp, 26 October 2022, in French.
11. Fruits à coque : peut-on relocaliser la production bio ?, Réussir, 17 April 2025, in French.
12. Bilan du Plan agriculture Méditerranée en régions, 2024 et 2025, French Ministry of Agriculture, in French.
13. Provence : la pistache structure sa filière, Réussir Fruits & Légumes, 3 January 2022, in French.