‘‘The Groundswell protest farmers are the Howl that cried wolf. The outlook for the agricultural economy is h

Mother nature has a delightful sense of irony. Not hours after the last Groundswell tractor chugged home, in a cloud of diesel fumes, the rains began to fall.

MetService issued a red warning – only the third in its history. A month’s average rainfall came down in two days in parts of the West Coast.

More than 2000 people were forced from their homes, major roads were closed, paddocks submerged, and Buller and Marlborough to declare local states of emergency.

The flooding came hot on the heels of storms that have prompted states of emergency in Canterbury (when the last red warning was issued) and Wellington in the past two months.

At the same time, people in China, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands are reeling from recent flooding. And the US and Canada were struck by intense heat waves.

Single flooding events are not directly attributed to climate change. But scientists have warned that it makes weather events more extreme, and more common.

Farmers are among those most affected by the heat, fires and floods ramped up by anthropogenic climate change.

In May, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a $4 million package for rural Cantabrians struggling to repair their land during after May’s floods. (Some complained it wasn’t enough.)

Last weekend, a further $200,000 was unlocked for farmers and growers across the West Coast and Marlborough.

And last year, a $3.5m fund was established to help stricken farmers cope with one of the most severe droughts in modern memory.

Groundswell has not taken an explicit position of climate change denial (although many of its supporters obviously are). Its position statement demands ‘‘unworkable elements of climate-change policy’’ be withdrawn, particularly the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Their Howl of a Protest was to oppose the