Polish farmers today blocked roads across the country and at border crossings with Ukraine, starting a month-long general strike to protest EU policies and the government’s lack of action to protect their work.

Farmers in France, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Spain and Germany are protesting against restrictions placed on them by EU measures to tackle climate change as well as rising costs and unfair competition from abroad.

Polish farmers have been very vocal about their reaction to the impact of cheap food imports from neighboring Ukraine.

About 100 farmers and 50 cars blocked access to the Medyka border crossing today, blocking traffic for all cars, Ukrainian border service spokesman Andriy Demchenko told television.

Polish media reported that across the country there were more than 250 peasant blockades.

Images showed convoys of tractors blocking roads and banners with slogans such as “Without us, you will be hungry, naked and sober”.

“Today the whole of Europe is on fire. The Green Deal has arrived, which has destroyed our view of agriculture,” one of the protesters, Vieslav Green, who is at the Hrubiesov border crossing, told private television network TVN24. “We are not against ecological solutions, but they should be agreed together with the farmers,” he adds.

Poland’s agriculture minister said he understood the challenges facing farmers, but hoped the protests could be organized in such a way that they would be the “least burdensome for citizens”.

“Farmers have legitimate concerns, expectations and demands to limit the excessive inflow of goods from Ukraine as well as other non-European markets to the EU, especially Poland,” Czeslaw Sikirski told public radio today.

The Solidarity farmers’ union, which announced the protests last week, said that in addition to blocking border crossings with Ukraine it plans to occasionally block roads across Poland until March 10.