`The worst thing is the waiting," says Malgorzaga Jablonski. We are standing beside the humming milking sheds of the Jablonskis' 100-cow dairy farm near Lodz, central Poland. Her complaint is one which Bertie Ahern will hear on his visit here next week again and again.

"The problem is the uncertainty," her husband Wlodzienierz explains of EU accession. "We can't predict clearly what standards we will need to meet or what help we will get."

Yet the Jablonskis are among the minority of Poland's farmers who support accession. If he can get the quota he wants, he can expand and the prospects for this most efficient of farmers are excellent. And when milk quotas are eventually abolished . . . his Dutch Friesians are already each producing an extraordinary 8,500 litres a year of high-quality milk. The Polish average is 3,136, and that of the EU 5,217 litres.

He is confident he will get enough quota despite EU efforts to curb Polish production to current levels. "Quotas will be allocated as an average to the whole country," he says, "and will be distributed among the serious producers while those with only three cows will be eliminated."

That is the harsh reality of Poland today - or rather of the two Polands which exist side by side in agriculture as in the economy. The one, dynamic, entrepreneurial, growing apace with, as one farmer put it, "one foot already in the EU", the other, old, tired, ill-educated, structurally and psychologically rooted to the past, unable to change without massive assistance.

Poland has two million farms, only 48 per cent of which produce for the market and whose average size is only some seven hectares and average annual output some €650. They contribute 4 per cent to GDP but represent a huge 27 per cent of the labour force, 4.3 million workers.

One estimate suggests that if Polish farming is to get close to the German model in terms of productivity and landholdings, it will mean a 2.7 million reduction in employment in agriculture.

Janusz Kapusta, a successful vegetable farmer from Lodz, estimates that "only 10 to 20 per cent" of farms can survive viably. Like Jablonski, he has a degree in agricultural science and will be among the lucky ones, but only 43 per cent of rural dwellers have any more than basic secondary education. Their future is bleak.

According to an official study, only 6 per cent of Polish farms are capable of accumulating capital and hence of reforming themselves. Demoralisation is such that a recent poll found only 14 per cent say they would invest a surplus if they had one in new land.

To sustain the radical modernisation process, the Taoiseach will be told, Poland, with a population of 38 million, needs massive EU aid and an accession date as a target to work towards.

Ministers like the head of the EU Integration office, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, and the deputy foreign minister, Andrzej Ananicz, insist that Poland will be ready by the end of 2002 and willing to accede in 2003. In Brussels few believe it can happen before mid-2004 and the expectation is that the Union will only be willing to signal a completion date for negotiations.

The country's chief negotiator, Jan Kol akowski, caused a storm in Warsaw after he told our group of visiting journalists that Poland must be in by 2005 "at the latest" - even to admit such a possibility was seen as defeatism.

Mr Ahern is coming to build alliances for the future and his expected message of Irish support for speedy accession and his account of the Irish EU success story are eagerly awaited, says Ananicz.

His support on one of the thorniest challenges of the negotiations, parity of treatment under CAP with EU farmers, would be particularly welcome, but it may pose a real dilemma for Ireland. Poland's demand for direct income support payments to farmers was not provided for in the Agenda 2000 budget and the EU has insisted that to do so would be far too expensive.

But without the aid, and with prices now broadly comparable in both EU and Poland, the Poles say they will have neither the incentive nor the means to reform. They complain than promised structural aid under the pre-accession SADAP programme has yet to start flowing and is far too little, at €200 million a year, to meet the challenges they face.

Warsaw puts the value of the extension of direct aids to their farmers at €3 billion a year, a figure which would probably cost Ireland a manageable €30 million in added budget contributions (but the Germans nearer €750 million).

SOME fear, however, that the demand, although ultimately likely to be conceded in part, may prove to be the final straw that breaks the direct aid camel's back for those current EU partners who already oppose the CAP - their insistence that the system should be gradually abolished would cost Ireland billions.

Saryusz-Wolski is adamant that unless they get equal treatment on direct aids the Poles will keep tariff barriers in place against EU farm imports, a source of an ongoing bitter dispute.

The demand for equality of treatment also has powerful political resonances in the countryside where, a recent survey showed, 78 per cent of farmers believe EU integration will lead to pauperisation of rural areas.

Bogdan Strzazkowski (54), from the tiny Przydworzyce village on the edge of Kozienicka forest, south of Warsaw, has 10 hectares in cereals and potatoes, one cow and 10 pigs. He once had more cows but the dairies no longer collect from small producers. His son has a part-time job and little interest in the land.

Strzazkowski sees no future and distrusts government and EU alike. He is scared by accession which he sees as a threat to Polish independence. "They want to admit us to the Union like a fifth-rank soldier, or the fifth wheel on a cart," he says.

Wlodzimierz Kowalsky (33), a local activist in the union of producers, agrees, complaining bitterly at the veterinary and phytosanitary standards imposed by the EU which, with the EU subsidies to farmers, has resulted in €515 million Polish farm trade deficit with the Union.

Estimates put the necessary improvements in hygiene and environmental standards at as much as €35 billion and the Poles will certainly be seeking a transition period for implementation.

Kowalsky, who typically supplements his small farm income with fertiliser sales, acknowledges the need for consolidation of holdings. "But what is going to happen to those displaced?" he asks. "We have to ensure a decent life for them." And they need to be reassured now, not later.

A young farmer from near Lodz, Krzysztof Kardynalski, has 300 to 400 piglets. Is he big enough to survive? "Definitely not," he says, "but even if we did not go into the EU we could not survive. We need to expand." He does favour EU accession but insists "all should be treated equally".

Wlodzienierz Jablonski puts the fear of the EU down to inertia induced by communism. "You will find farmers who are open-minded and dynamic and many older conservative farmers where there is resentment," he says. "Remember that five years ago you could survive on five hectares with two cows and two pigs. They lived under communism for so long they can no longer adjust."

The Minister for Agriculture, Artur Balazs, himself a substantial and active farmer, admits that agriculture is by far the most difficult accession problem. "Our key demands are partnership and equality," he says, adding somewhat disingenuously that "I have no objections if the EU abolishes all subsidies to all". Not a prospect that will find favour with the Taoiseach. "But, delay would be a political disaster," he warns.

Adam Michnik, the editor of Gazeta Wyborzca, says it is important the EU helps the inevitable change as shock therapy in rural areas will bring huge social problems to the cities.

However, the money will be difficult to find, warns Bruno de Thomas, the EU's representative in Poland. "I have a real fear that the Poles will be disappointed by the financial means at the disposal of the Union."

psmyth@irish-times.ie