Thousands of road signs identifying villages across rural France have been turned upside down by young farmers protesting against EU regulations and government diktats.

Driving through rural Dordogne, motorists would be forgiven for wanting to have their eyes tested: sign after sign has been unscrewed and turned round.

After the first upside-down signs were spotted a few days ago in Tarn, south-west France, they are now cropping up across the country.

In many cases, stickers have been added with the French words: “C’est le monde à l’envers.”

The literal translation is “the world’s turned upside down” but the expression means: “What is the world coming to?”

On their long list of grievances are calls for an end to the pile-up of the “norms” they are forced to respect from the French government, as well as fury that foreign imports do not have to respect the strict rules imposed on them by Paris.

The farmers are also unhappy with an EU obligation to leave 4 per cent of all their land fallow under the Common Agricultural Policy.

They accuse the French government of not applying the EGAlim law, which is supposed to create a fair balance between producers and supermarkets, and promote healthier food.

The signs initially perplexed residents, mayors and gendarmes, two of whom were seen photographing the upside-down place names as the Telegraph drove past in northern Dordogne.

Then Jeunes Agriculteurs (JA), the young farmers’ union, announced that no, the sky was not falling on French heads, and that they were behind the stunt.

French farmers are renowned for their radical protests: on Friday, union activists dumped a ton of manure in front of McDonald’s and Burger King outlets in the Haute-Saône, south-east France, because they felt not enough French beef was being used in the fast food restaurants.

It is, they say, a high-profile, humorous and “peaceful” way of raising awareness about their predicament.

“We’ve already overturned 800 [signs] in the Dordogne and by the weekend every département in France will be affected. That means probably 40,000 signs,” said Clément Courteix, the vice president of the Dordogne’s JA union.

The 28-year old slowly drove his huge green John Deere tractor across a muddy field, planting wheat seed as he went, before coming to a halt.

“These will one day be flour for millions of baguettes. But I’m stopping for now. It’s too wet and muddy,” he said.

Among the fifth generation of farmers to plough these fields, Clément took over from his father in 2014 and has more than 600 acres of land on which he grows wheat, maize, sunflowers, rapeseed, barley and soya.

He also has 12,000 organic egg-laying hens producing four million eggs per year.

“We have no idea what the food situation will be like with all these conflicts that we could have either in the Middle East or in Ukraine,” he said.

“And rather than work towards food sovereignty, we are forced to leave 4 per cent of our land alone. So that’s 4 per cent less food and revenue.”

Older fellow farmers down the road were equally supportive.

Christophe Lapierre, 52, who rears Limousin cattle and has more than 850 acres of land – half for cereal, half for pastures – said: “Norms, norms, norms. We are policed on all sides. Today we can’t go into a field without writing everything down. We try and respect all these laws but it’s hard to keep up.”

“With Jacques Chirac it was much better. He loved farmers. [Nicolas] Sarkozy was the worst – he never left the city. [Emmanuel] Macron’s not much cop either.”

Mr Courteix claimed that France’s rules on the “use of products are constantly changing compared to our EU colleagues and even more so compared to those elsewhere. When we open our toolbox every morning, there are fewer and fewer left to protect our plants, to help our animals.”

He asked: “We know that there are some are problematic and are perhaps responsible for certain pollution but if we remove them, what do we replace them with?”.

Young farmers were particularly irked with a European proposal to cut pesticide use by half by 2030 and a total ban in “sensitive areas” such as parks.

On Wednesday, however, the full European Parliament shot down, in a 299-to-207 vote, the recommendation.

Marie Toussaint, a French MEP with the Left-wing Greens grouping, said on social media that “the Right and the extreme-Right torpedoed adoption of the pesticide regulation”.

But Peter Liese, a German MEP with the centre-Right European People’s Party (EPP), said: “Today is a good day for farmers”.

The EPP and other Right-leaning groups are keen to have farmers onside for the polls, creating tensions about the commission’s drive to put the bloc on the path to a carbon-neutral, sustainable future.

Plan to ride to Paris

Europe’s powerful agricultural lobby has come out against legislative measures crimping production.

A key biodiversity bill aimed at rewilding EU land and water habitats, which was initially approved earlier this month, was watered down from the original text presented by the commission.

Christiane Lambert, the head of French farmers’ umbrella body the FNSEA, said of the rejected pesticide bill: “At last, the European Parliament recognises that the pesticide regulation was poorly calibrated, unrealistic, unfinanced.”

Farmers’ political clout in the EU came to the fore this week in the Netherlands after the populist politician Geert Wilders’ shock election victory.

Among smaller parties, the Farmer-Citizen Movement – or BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) – said that it would be willing to govern with Mr Wilders, who is struggling to forge a coalition.

Caroline van der Plas, the leader of the BBB, arrived for the talks in style, riding in a green tractor.

The BBB’s seven seats in the lower house of parliament wouldn’t be needed for a majority there, but it holds a large number of seats in the senate, which has the power to block legislation.

As well as restricting immigration, a hard-Right coalition would soften plans to reduce livestock and fertiliser use, which are strongly opposed by farmers.

While French unionists are for now sticking to their tongue-in-cheek protest, if there is no movement, they plan to ride to Paris on tractors next week to raise the pressure.