The Registre Parcellaire Graphique (RPG): what France’s land parcel register is for and how to consult it

The Registre Parcellaire Graphique (RPG — France’s graphical land parcel register) identifies and geolocates every agricultural parcel that has been the subject of a CAP declaration (the EU Common Agricultural Policy, PAC in French) in France. Originally designed for processing European aid, it is becoming a useful reference for any traceability question linked to the parcel — well beyond its original use.

What the RPG actually contains

• The geometry of each crop block (îlot cultural) — the outline of the parcel or group of adjoining parcels farmed in a uniform way. The anonymised RPG is distributed in Lambert-93 (EPSG:2154, coordinates in metres) for mainland France, and in a UTM projection specific to each overseas department — not in WGS84: that is what the RPG download feed of the IGN Géoplateforme states.
• The main crop declared for the season concerned — cereal, grassland, orchard, vineyard, according to a standardised nomenclature.
• The area of each block, as declared.

The RPG does not contain the identity of the farmer — the published data are anonymised, with the named version reserved for the administrations and for the farmer themselves for their own parcels.

Where to consult it

Two separate points of access, depending on what you are looking for:

• The anonymous RPG, as open data — published annually, viewable and downloadable free of charge through the Géoportail of IGN (the French national mapping agency) or the French public data portal. Useful for locating a generic parcel, checking a crop declared in an area, or cross-checking a geometry put forward by a third party.
• The personal parcel register — accessible to each farmer through their online CAP declaration account (téléPAC), with their own named parcels, which can be modified from one season to the next.

Why the RPG now goes beyond its original CAP use

Three uses, separate from the aid declaration, now rely on the RPG:

• Reusing a geometry already declared for the EUDR — a farmer who has already declared their parcels under the CAP potentially has the coordinates needed for their due diligence statement, without having to survey each parcel again in the field. The two declarations are not automatically synchronised — but the CAP geometry is a reliable starting point to be checked rather than established from scratch. A technical step comes in between: the EUDR describes geolocation in latitude and longitude (Article 2, point 28, of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115), which a Lambert-93 coordinate, expressed in metres, is not. The geometry therefore has to be reprojected before it is reused.
• Cross-checking a declaration of origin — a buyer can check that a parcel put forward by a supplier does correspond to a consistent crop in the public RPG, without needing privileged access.
• Analysing an agricultural area — researchers, local authorities and environmental monitoring tools use the open-data RPG to map agricultural land use across a territory.

What the RPG does not replace

The RPG documents an annual declaration, not a continuous history — on its own, it does not prove the absence of deforestation since 31 December 2020 on a given parcel (that is the purpose of cross-checking with satellite imagery, covered in our dedicated guide). Nor does it replace a title deed or a lease, from which it is independent.

Common mistakes

• Confusing the public anonymous RPG with your own named register — the former never shows the farmer’s identity, including for your own parcels.
• Assuming that the CAP geometry is automatically valid for an EUDR declaration without checking it — the two registers serve different purposes and are not guaranteed to be identical.
• Overlooking the fact that the RPG is updated annually — an old geometry may no longer match the actual use of the parcel after a change of farmer or crop.

Checklist

1. Locate your own parcels through téléPAC so as to have their declared geometry.
2. Check a third-party parcel through the anonymous open-data RPG before validating a declaration of origin.
3. Cross-check the CAP geometry against a field survey, and reproject it from Lambert-93 to latitude/longitude, before reusing it for an EUDR declaration.
4. Check the season year of the RPG consulted — old data may be out of date.