The farmers’ demonstration was best summed up in two images: real tractors being driven by farmers around Parliament Square, and beside them a collection of toy tractors being peddled around by their children.

They illustrated the essence of the farmers’ argument: there is a deep-seated cultural expectation that they will pass on their farm to the next creation.

For many, it feels like a deep responsibility that stretches high into their household tree, and so the expectation falls upon them to ensure the very thing their forebears did for them they manage to as well – hand it down to their sons and daughters.

As a reporter, I adore covering protests and marches at Westminster.

They are an essential megaphone in the never-ending exchange of our democracy.

I have been turning up at them with a microphone and camera for 20 years – to witness and scrutinise those making the most of their much-cherished correct to arrive to London and – often – yell at the government.

I adore them because people sufficiently passionate about their factor to trek to the capital and then make a community, almost certainly contentious, argument often deserve to be listened to and should be vigorously questioned too.

And, for me, those conversations propose an insight into not just what those protesting ponder, but why they ponder it.

This assembly of farmers left me with three thoughts:

Firstly, as we have already explored, there is the huge power of the cultural expectation of handing on a farm to the next creation.

It is not just a business, but an identity, a belonging, a geographical rootedness – and the prospect of not being able to pass it on generates huge rage and emotion.

That is a large part of the explanation for why this argument has got so noisy, so quickly.

Secondly, contested notions of fairness are so often central to the most contentious political arguments, and this one is no different.

The government argues existing inheritance levy isn’t fair or sustainable – as everyone else sufficiently well off to pay it is charged 40% and farmers are charged nothing.

Ministers also debate the exemptions have tempted wealthy folk to buy up farm land – pushing up its worth – primarily to avoid inheritance levy.

And, as they are at pains to point out over and over again, they insist the vast majority of household farms will be unaffected and those that are will be charged 20%, half the rate charged to anyone else caught within its grasp.

Plus, they declare, schools and hospitals desperately require more money.

Others declare the farmers are a noisy, well-organised lobby throng seeking to shield their often considerable riches and perpetuate a privilege to the exclusion of others.

And all this brings us to the third large question here: what does it cruel to be wealthy?

Talking to farmers, very quickly our exchange would often involve very large numbers – talk of assets running into a few million pounds.

These are huge figures that point to considerable riches and yet the farmers insist, for two reasons, they are not wealthy.

Their annual profits is often modest, they point out – and they don’t worth their farm in numerical terms, but in emotional ones. The prospect of selling it horrifies them; handing it on is what they seek to do.

The farmers insist they are determined to press on with their campaign.

Ministers insist they are determined to press on with their plans for transformation.

You may choose to sympathise with the farmers’ arguments or not – or the government’s arguments, or not – but the protests propose an insight into what contributes to the view of many of the farmers, and why them backing down doesn’t seem likely any period soon.