The farmers of France are mobilising. Their anger will be an early test for Gabriel Attal; the countryside is unknown territory for the new prime minister, a young man raised in the affluent suburbs of Paris, like the majority of Emmanuel Macron’s government.

The first dissent was on Friday in the south-west of France, in and around Toulouse. On the motorway linking the city to the Atlantic coast, the farmers erected a barricade with bales of hay that is still in place three days later. Their largest union, the FNSEA, has warned this is likely to be the first of many such actions. Their president, Arnaud Rousseau told the government: ‘What interests me isn’t the performance, but the answers that will be given to farmers over the next few days to long-standing demands.’

How will Attal achieve anything when so much of the country’s agricultural policy is decided in Brussels and not Paris?

There was also a gentle threat to a president with a reputation for theatrically promising much and delivering practically nothing: ‘Words are no longer enough for farmers,’ said Rousseau. ‘What we need are concrete actions’.

Representatives of FNSEA will meet Attal today. He will hear their many grievances: a tax on tractor fuel, irrigation restrictions following last year’s drought, cheap imports from abroad and anger at the endless and increasing red tape that makes their lives harder each month.

There is particular rage at the free trade agreement signed in November between the EU and New Zealand. In the words of the NZ government, this deal ‘cuts costs through more favourable access to the EU…increases opportunities and reduces barriers’.

Europe’s farmers believe the competition puts them at a disadvantage, as do many French politicians. Marine Le Pen claimed that the EU is ‘undermining the sovereignty and food security’ of France and its ultimate objective is ‘to see the disappearance of French agriculture’. The left-wing La France Insoumise party said the deal threatens ‘whole swathes of our agriculture’.

Yet another source of anger is the EU’s suspension of custom duties on Ukrainian imports. When this measure was extended for a further 12 months last year, Brussels boasted that it ‘will help alleviate the difficult situation faced by Ukrainian producers and exporters’.

But across the continent, from France to Germany to Romania and Bulgaria, this decision has stoked anger. Last April, Pekka Pesonen, head of the European farmers’ association, called on the EU ‘to address the severe consequences that open borders and unmanaged imports of some agricultural goods have caused’. The EU ignored the calls.

These decisions by the EU are the latest blows to a French industry that has been in decline for decades. In 1970, there were 1.5 million farms in France; today there are just 416,000. On average, a farmer takes their own life every two days in France – 180 deaths a year in a profession that for centuries has embodied la Belle France.

But no longer. The discontent felt in the countryside isn’t just targeted towards rules and regulations. It is also aimed at that France championed by Macron: that of the metropolitan ‘start up’ nation. A France of tecchies not tractors.

In a resentful op-ed in Le Figaro at the weekend, the editor of a countryside magazine lashed out at the government, the EU and ‘neo-urbanites’. These are people, often Parisians, who either move full-time to the country or purchase a second home, and then moan about the ‘visual, noise and odour pollution’.  In recent years there have been a spate of harsh penalties dished out by courts to farmers: for cockerels that crow too loudly and cows who moo too much.

Most recently, a farmer in Beauvais was ordered to pay €100,000 (£85,800) to his neighbours for the ‘noise and odour pollution’ caused by his farm. In a show of solidarity for the farmer concerned, the FNSEA organised a protest rally and among many of those present there was a sense of injustice towards a Paris and Brussels elite that they believe hold their way of life in contempt.

As the editor of the countryside magazine put it in his op-ed, farmers have a ‘feeling of saturation with the administrative overkill they endure on a daily basis, with the obligation to sacrifice everything to the sacrosanct “ecological transition” championed by the European Union’.

Macron is rattled at the prospect of a nationwide farmers’ protest. He instructed prefects to meet farmers’ unions and organisations at the weekend. Meanwhile, Attal went to the Rhône region, where he promised to ‘make life easier’ for farmers because the industry is a ‘source of pride’ for France.

But how will Attal achieve that when so much of the country’s agricultural policy is decided in Brussels and not Paris? There is talk of a new protest movement ready to descend on Paris, as the Yellow Vests did six years ago. They call themselves the ‘Gilets Verts’ (Green Vests) but they won’t be coming from the countryside to the capital in cars. They’ll be driving tractors.