The Netherlands is an impressive country – prosperous and efficient, but with more soul behind that efficiency than in Germany.

But, with limited land resources it has one of the world's most productive farming industries, it has always had a liberal and radical streak. Farmers everywhere were left with a smile when the small Farmers Citizens Movement, formed in 2019, this week left the government and political establishment with a bloody nose.

This small party is on course to take 17 out of 75 seats in the Dutch senate. This will give it more seats than any other party, most notably that of the Dutch coalition Prime Minister, Mark Rutter. He has been pushing a radical environmental agenda, loved by the EU but to the disadvantage of the Dutch farming industry which has to be efficient because of land availability.

The Senate is the Dutch equivalent of the House of Lords and it has the power to block, or hold up legislation from the lower House of Parliament. It is a different system to the UK, with an elected, rather than politically-appointed upper house.

This outcome is a clear message to the Rutte coalition – which won just 12 seats – that it is getting ahead of what people want by pursuing a green agenda. This is focussed, as elsewhere in the EU, on reducing nitrogen use and overall farming efficiency.

This is part of the support for the EU's nett zero carbon thinking. Across Europe, farming opposition to this thinking has been ignored, but now this small Dutch party has said mainstream politicians are not delivering what people want.

This may all be a flash in the pan. The party, started by a Dutch agricultural journalist in 2019, is probably politically naive and unprepared for the success it achieved. It now has to decide whether this is just a protest vote, or a movement whose time has come.

Wherever its political path leads, this outcome is a boost for farmers everywhere, fed up with being told that everyone else, including politicians, know more about the countryside than those who live there. Farmers are rightly frustrated at being criticised by armchair eco-warriors, adored by the media, that they cannot run the countryside in harmony with nature.

This swell of support for the Dutch farmers' party was a win for common sense. The shock message it delivered was akin to Brexit, albeit on a much smaller and less political scale.

That message was that farmers are tired of being told that the Hague – the Dutch political capital – and Brussels know best. Farmers have grown tired of being soft targets over the environment and climate change.

They know they have a part to play, but it must be realistic. It needs to be part of a global strategy that does not exclude the biggest polluters and make the developed world pay now for its past successes and excesses by paying off others or gifting them lower standards, not least in agriculture.

It would be a dream that this uprising of farmer power could happen elsewhere. It might happen in France, or other pro-farmer countries with an elected upper chamber, but as things stand in the UK, it will not happen.

The odds of our general election structures block radical change and a politically appointed House of Lords ensures protest groups remain just that. They cannot turn frustration and on the ground support into political influence.

It is possible – maybe even probable – that what has happened in the Netherlands will be one of those events that grabs headlines, but which is ultimately drowned out by the political establishment.

Farmers in Scotland, frustrated that nothing, including Brexit, seems capable of delivering change or turning a headlong green dash into sensible policies can enjoy a fantasy that the Dutch Farmer Citizens party will be the start of a new and different green political revolution.

The worm has, for now, turned in the Netherlands. It can happen elsewhere, but probably not in our urban dominated society where questioning green thinking has become politically incorrect for politicians, the media and saddest of all for the farming establishment that should be criticising these policies and looking with envy to the Dutch.