Planting Pines in Dry Spain: The Economics Don't Add Up

Buying dry land and planting pines: a business that hits the 400 mm wall

The recipe is simple. Buy several hectares of dryland, plant pine trees, and wait. In twenty years, proponents claim, you sell them for timber at ten times your initial cost, plus any appreciation in land value. As a bonus, there are reforestation subsidies and payments for "CO2 sequestration." Pines require little maintenance and grow in relatively arid areas.

Specific data limit the scope. The property would be located in La Sarracena, a district in Ávila province, Spain, at approximately 1,050 meters altitude, with 400 mm of annual precipitation and frosts reaching -8 ºC. The terrain is flat, lacks immediate water access—only a spring reachable by tractor and a 1,000-liter tank—and has no owner willing to relocate; an unemployed acquaintance would do the work.

Can you plant pines with 400 mm of rain per year?

Here lies the first flaw. The most common criterion sets the safety limit at 800 mm annually; below this, experts warn, the farm could turn into a desert overnight if regulations on water or CO2 change. The concern is not meteorological, but regulatory.

Opposing views don't deny the data but contextualize it: those 400 mm represent the average rainfall across much of the country, where pines grow "very well." Frosts are also not seen as fatal for Mediterranean species. However, the area is unsuitable for cork oaks: none exist within a hundred-kilometer radius. Cold doesn't kill the plantation; the bottom line might.

How long does a dryland pine take to produce sellable timber?

There is little room for optimism regarding the timber timeline. A dryland pine after twenty years has a trunk diameter of at most 15 centimeters; reaching 40 centimeters requires waiting until eighty years, at which point, critics note, "you'll get pennies for them." The image of a Christmas fir tree captures the irony.

Defenders of the plan clarify the fine print: pines are planted already grown, two or three meters tall each. The business model isn't logging, but increasing the property's value so someone buys it for more than the investment. A third party shares their experience: they cut down 60 pines over ten meters tall, but nobody wanted them; the timber had no market and ended up as sawdust. Land works as an asset; trees as crops, far less so.

Which species tolerate conditions best and which don't?

The discussion shifted to the plant catalog. Instead of pine monocultures, diverse Mediterranean forests are proposed: holm oaks, ashes, poplars, and fruit trees like almond, walnut, fig, olive, or carob. The rebuttal is quick: ashes and poplars "drink more water than a camel," fruit trees require care and are prone to pests, and holm oaks take a century to mature. Stone pines and resin pines are considered options.

A more viable path emerges: mycorrhized holm oak for truffle production, which commands high prices. Cork oaks are also mentioned, though their bark isn't harvestable for stoppers until about forty years have passed, excluding them from twenty-year calculations. Anecdotally, someone boasts of four stone pines planted from seedlings that, at twenty years, exceed three meters in height and half a meter in trunk diameter. Few cones, however.

Fire: the risk no subsidy covers

The most uncomfortable objection isn't about rain. Pines are resinous and burn like torches. And fire, in the worst-case scenario, comes from neighbors: buying from an outsider implies assuming boundaries may be set alight so the property ends up sold cheaply. Ruining two decades of investment takes ten minutes and poses almost no risk to the arsonist. No internal rate of return calculation discounts this liability.

Permits: from agricultural to forestry use

The administrative maze remains. There is a national soil law and a regional one applying and expanding it; land can be classified as forest, agricultural, or urbanizable, with local planning dictating usage. In Galicia, they say, if you have meadows and want to plant pines, you must first publish the properties to see if any livestock farmers lease them, and only if nobody wants them after two years is the change of use authorized. The recurring conclusion: whoever recognizes your ownership dictates how you use it.

The balance rests where analysis stalls. Nobody disputes that land values rise; many doubt trees will keep pace. Between drought, fire, and changing regulations, the twenty-year bet looks less like a forestry business and more like a primitive wager on the soil. We still need to know what cards we're playing.