The gigantic green-and-yellow tractor should be the pride and joy of Janusz Wnorowski’s humble farmyard. But the 57-year-old milk farmer associates the John Deere with the debt and bureaucracy that have visited him since Poland joined the European Union.

“Whom I vote for is a religious decision, not a political one,’’ he says, suggesting he will choose the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party of President Andrzej Duda. Tacitly endorsed by the powerful Roman Catholic Church, Law and Justice is seen in this village as a tool for Jesus Christ to give John Deere – and thus the EU – a good hiding.

Law and Justice may not win Sunday’s parliamentary and senate elections outright. But surveys suggest its rise will consolidate Poland’s shift to the right. It is expected to finish first, at least 10% ahead of the governing centrist Civic Platform. Law and Justice flirts with racism, homophobia and antisemitism. But in Kulesze Kościelne, a village about 200km northeast of Warsaw, it is all about milk.

“Since we joined the EU in 2004, our government has not fought for Poland,’’ says Wnorowski, who has 95 cows. “All this,’’ he says, pointing to the John Deere and a range of alterations imposed by EU rules, “is unnecessary on our small farms.’’ One outbuilding carries an EU plaque, showing that it was built with a grant.

“We have received money, but we have also had to take out loans. Now people in Brussels are deciding that grain farmers should be better compensated for last summer’s drought than beef and milk farmers. It is nonsensical. Poland did not decide to impose sanctions on Russia, yet we have been the first to suffer the consequences of them.’’

Kulesze Kościelne, a farming community dating back to the 15th century, takes a bleak view of the future it believes is being shaped for it by the EU: the death of small farms. In a meeting room full of sports trophies, mayor Józef Grochowski, 60, describes an incredibly united village. “We stick together. We are all milk farmers or have been. Last year, we were the Polish village whose cows produced the highest amount of milk per cow.

“But now the rules have changed. If you produce too much milk, you are fined. One of our farmers faces certain ruin. He has to pay a fine of 600,000 złotys (£101,000). He is not the only one facing punishment. It is madness.’’

A crucifix hangs over the meeting room door. “The municipality was built up around the church. We are very close,’’ says the mayor, who often reads the lesson on Sundays in front of “500 people at an average mass – 1,000 on feast days’’.

The huge, white Bleeding Heart of Jesus Christ church is just two minutes’ walk from the town hall. To reach it you pass three electoral banners displayed on the church railings, all of them hung by Law and Justice. The noticeboard carries “pro-life’’ posters. “The priest does not tell people which political party to support,’’ says the mayor, “but he advises us to vote for a politician who is a good Catholic, from a party that represents the ideals of the church. Everyone knows.’’

The message was crystal clear at the presidential elections in May. That was when the 3,300-strong population of Kulesze Kościelne set a national record that is more in keeping with the times than its bumper milk harvest. On a 63.7% turnout – exceptionally high in Polish terms – 93.5% of voters chose Andrzej Duda.

Analysts say homogeneous, isolated villages such as Kulesze Kościelne have proved ideal electoral building blocks for Law and Justice. The gradual campaign has lasted for the eight years that the secular Civic Platform has been in power. Its targets have been smallholder farmers in remote locations, who are naturally rightwing for having resisted nationalisation under communism. They are devout and hostile to taking orders from faraway mortals, let alone suited townies in Brussels.

Institute of Public Affairs director Jacek Kucharczyk says the Catholic Church in Poland has become increasingly politicised: “Since the Polish pope John Paul II died in 2005, the church has become anti-European and reactionary. It wants a total ban on abortion in Poland and objects to the Civic Platform’s law (in September 2015) that made in-vitro fertilisation broadly available.

“People in Law and Justice have been close to successive so-called ‘citizens referendums’ petitions calling for a ban on abortion, for instance. Those signatures have been collected after Sunday mass, on church steps. This has been one of Law and Justice’s most effective tools,’’ he says.

While the support for Law and Justice from conservative bishops is largely implicit, the party has received explicit support from a Catholic media empire, including the nationwide broadcaster Radio Maryja, which in some remote locations has the FM band to itself.

Kucharczyk says that during the recent parliamentary election campaign Law and Justice dropped issues with a moralistic flavour, such as abortion. Even though party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński last week claimed “migrants carry very dangerous diseases’’, this was a rare rant in a middle-of-the-road campaign that has addressed issues many Poles care about.

Law and Justice accuses the Civic Platform of allowing Poland to become Germany’s political lapdog in the EU, especially in the wake of its support for German chancellor Angela Merkel on issues such as the conflict in Ukraine and the Greek debt crisis.

It claims that the government has allowed greedy foreign investors and banks to run roughshod over Poland, failing to protect the country’s labour force and small borrowers. The Law and Justice party’s campaign pledges to raise taxes on banks and retailers, fire up social spending and reduce the retirement age.

Protestations from Civic Platform that it has done a good job – building Poland into the EU’s sixth largest economy – seem hollow. A good job for whom, asks village shopkeeper Maria Kulesza, 69. “At the end of each month, I have several customers who can only afford to buy bread if I offer it to them on credit.

“Here in the village, we look after one another, so my shop can survive. But in bigger towns and cities the foreign supermarkets have taken over. The small shops have closed. I want a government that will invest in homegrown industry so that the young people stop leaving Poland to work elsewhere,’’ says Kulesza.

She worries that one of her five children, her 45-year-old son, may soon have no option but to seek work abroad.

“He was running a sweet shop for me at the school. But then new rules were introduced, saying you could only sell healthy things in schools. But children want to buy sweets! If we just meekly accept all the EU rules, all our sons will have to go and work elsewhere.’’

Neither she nor the other villagers seem to think Law and Justice is racist or opposed to immigrants. She is shocked at the thought. “As a principle, we must help and respect others. But Poland is a poor country that can barely help itself. How can we hope to help others when we can’t help ourselves?