Poles glimpse EU salvation, down on the (14th-century) farm

As Brussels handed down its verdict yesterday on Poland's readiness to join the European Union, Elzbieta Nadolny, and her pig farmer husband Jan showed off how they have already adapted to the reality of future life inside the EU.

Thirty pigs have become a sideline to the business of agroturystyka, or farm tourism. The farmhouse and its neat garden decorated with cartwheels, in a remote corner of north-east Poland, one of the poorest parts of the country, has been turned over to accommodate German and Dutch ornithologists and children on nature breaks from schools in Warsaw. Visitors are charged £10 a day for full board and lodging.

It is only October but already temperatures are close to freezing. The countryside is bleak but Mrs Nadolny is optimistic the birdwatchers and naturelovers can sustain her livelihood through the revolution that is about to be unleashed on Poland's two million family farms. She says: "We are not the ones who will suffer."

However, many other small Polish farmers will not survive the transition unscathed.

Much of Polish agriculture is what Brussels terms semi-subsistence, in other words, only a step above the horse-and-cart stage. The family-run peasant holdings often have storks nesting in their roofs, horse-drawn ploughs are a common sight while a combine harvester or even a pesticide would seem absurdly hi-tech.

The average size of the farms is around 10 hectares – tiny by EU standards where the size of an average farm runs to thousands of hectares. Nearly a quarter of the Polish workforce live off the land but the farms are so small that they contribute only a tiny amount to national income. Many of these people will be squeezed off the land. "Some farms will have to close down, people will have to find other jobs in the countryside, or leave," said Stefaniak Eugeniusz, the director of a nearby institute for agricultural training.

Government officials in Warsaw accept that there are too many people on the land, and confirm the farms will have to be merged and expanded.

The smallest peasant will have to put forward "business plans" showing how they plan to diversify. "If not they will be left out," said one government official bluntly.

For the bigger Polish farmers, the EU will open up immense potential markets and offer them generous aid, but will also expose them to competition from more efficient farms in other countries.

Despite assurances that there will be million of euros from Brussels to ease the inevitable social upheaval many Polish peasants fear that Poland is about to swap Moscow for the tyranny of Brussels.

Ironically the switch to bigger more intensive farming comes at a time when consumers in western Europe are turning to organic food from small scale farms.

The even bigger irony is that just as Poland is being declared ready to join the club, countryside unease fuelled by the weekly sermons of Catholic Parish priests is feeding a Polish backlash against joining the EU.

And now politicians in Poland's parliament are openly threatening rebellion. The Polish Peasants Party, a junior partner in the left-wing coalition government, is threatening to campaign for a "No" vote in the referendum Poland will have to stage to approve membership next spring.

They would be joining Andrezej Lepper, a pig farmer turned leader of a nationalist populist movement called Self Defence which also opposes accession. Mr Lepper and his 22 MPs are dismissed as an irrelevance by many, but he derives strong support from Poland's "disappointed" class and his support is running at around 17 per cent. In Podlasie Province Radio Maryja broadcasts anti-EU views from hardline family leagues conservatives.

The government faces an uphill battle to convince many Poles that membership of the EU is a good thing. Increasing numbers of Poles fear that the pace of change demanded by EU membership will be more profound than anything since Soviet rule, and that the human cost may be too high.

The negotiations have produced a raw deal in some respects. Poles will not gain the freedom to travel to find work in most other EU countries for a further seven years, and after a 12 year transition German and Dutch land owners will be able to come in and buy up Polish properties. Many Poles are baffled at the news that they will have to contribute over €200m (£126m) per year towards the British budget rebate.

And the Polish government is still fighting Brussels' demands that in the initial years of EU membership, their farmers should receive only a quarter of what other EU farmers get in subsidies.

At least two huge steel plants will have to shut down under the membership terms to meet the demands of "restructuring" of steel capacity. That means thousands of jobs will be axed. Ironically it is the generation that led the revolution against the Soviet Empire – workers in the old heavy industries like ship building and steel – who fear that they are the ones who are being left behind.

It seemed so uncomplicated in 1989, when communism had collapsed and the shipyard electrician-turned-president, Lech Walesa was still a hero. Poland, crushed by the Nazis, then imprisoned behind Stalin's Iron Curtain, eventually to emerge as the cradle of a democratic revolution that would spread across the Eastern Bloc, was heading for the warm embrace of the EU.

Poland is an economic success story by East European standards. Warsaw, its skyline dominated by the Stalinist Palace of Culture, is not the dreary place it once was. Capitalism has brought billions in foreign investments, gleaming new office blocks, hotels and Tesco hypermarkets. The new rich live in gated housing developments and the city's legendary jazz clubs are full every night of the week. On the capital's smartest shopping street Nowy Swiat, immaculately groomed Polish women might as well be in London's Knightsbridge, as they browsed in the fashionable and Butiks and sipped their cappuccinos in Coffee Heaven.

But as one EU diplomat noted: "The risk is you see the Prada store and you think Poland has done it, but then you go 30 miles east and you are in the 14th century."