A Greek farmer enraged at refugees tenting on his land has been filmed ploughing through their campsite with his tractor.

Claiming he needed to prepare the land for his cows, farmer Lazaros Oulis turned the field in Idomeni, Greece into soft soil while dozens of migrants stood by watching.

Footage of the incident showed him driving through litter and narrowly dodging tents before he was stopped by local police.

Lazaros Oulis ploughs through his field in Idomeni, which has been used as a refugee campsite over the winter

The enraged farmer claimed he had no problem with the refugees, but he had to prepare the field for his cows

A trail of ploughed dirt reveals where Mr Oulis has already driven through his field in Idomeni

A young boy watches as the enraged farmer attempts to plough through the campsite debris and rubbish

A group of migrants watch in surprise as Mr Oulis tears through the refugee camp on his tractor

Police later stopped him from continuing to plough the field, which he said he was necessary to provide for his cows

The land, which Mr Oulis owns, is located in the Idomeni campsite where refugees have for months gathered in the hope the nearby border to Macedonia will be reopened.

For the foreseeable future, the border will not open - and as winter turns into spring, signs of brewing tension have appeared among farmers who want to plow their fields.

Mr Oulis said: 'I need to plow my field. Not somebody else's field, mine! I have a business with 70-80 calves, I want to produce (food for them), feed them, because, financially, I can't take this anymore.

'I told some NGOs here that I would give them a couple of acres so they could build two large sheds and I could save the rest of my field, nobody paid attention to me.

'I don't have a problem with the (refugee) families, no problem at all. I could have been in their place. But I, also, have obligations.'

Some refugees pointed out that Mr Oulis had set up a canteen in the camp but that business had dropped off as other canteens had appeared with better prices.

However, many still showed understanding for the situation he was in.

'He is right, I say that he is right because it's his land.' said 32-year-old Syrian Reshal Hamdo. 'We don't know what we will do, this is not our country, it's not our land.'

Despite the border closure, more than 11,000 people remain in Idomeni, which was once a transit camp.

It has long since overflowed, with men, women and children enduring deplorable conditions in howling winds and pouring rain for days and weeks.

While hundreds have boarded buses heading to other, more organized camps that Greek authorities have been frantically setting up across the country, many insist they will not leave.

Lazaros Oulis ploughs his field - which has been used as a refugee camp for months - despite migrants still living on it

He was eventually forced to stop the ploughing by police as there were many small children nearby

Mr Oulis shows the trash left in his field by the makeshift refugee camp in Idomeni, Greece

He claimed he needed to prepare his land for his herd of cows ahead of the long hot summer

Meanwhile, the UN has called for legal safeguards to be in place before refugees are returned to Turkey under an agreement with the EU, while warning that conditions in Greece are deteriorating.

Days before Turkey is due to begin taking back illegal migrants from Greece on April 4 under the deal, fears are growing it will not begin on time with neither side being fully ready.

About 51,000 refugees and migrants are in Greece, where arrivals more than doubled on Tuesday to 766 from previous days, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

The spokesperson warned conditions on the islands of Lesbos and Samos - where three people were stabbed in rioting last night - and at Piraeus and Idomeni are worsening.

'The risk of panic and injury in these sites and others is real.'

It comes as Amnesty International accused Turkey of forcibly returning hundreds of Syrian refugees to their homeland since mid-January in a practice exposing the 'fatal flaws' in the EU agreement.

The organization says its research on the Turkish-Syrian border suggests that around 100 Syrians -- who often have not registered in Turkey - are expelled from Turkey each day.

Advocacy groups are concerned that the deal, which aims to stem the flow of illegal migrants and goes into effect April 4, threatens the rights of asylum seekers, and they question whether Turkey is a safe country for them.

The EU-Turkey deal stipulates the return to Turkey of any Syrian refugee arriving on the Greek islands to be offset by resettling a Turkey-based Syrian in the EU.

'Far from pressuring Turkey to improve the protection it offers Syrian refugees, the EU is in fact incentivizing the opposite,' said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's director for Europe and Central Asia.