Embrace mud as force for good

Some say Gordon Brown will eventually dig farmers out of the mire, writes Rural Affairs Editor Nathan Rous. A year of unmitigated misery has to end sometime and a healthy dose of understanding will go a long way to achieving this.

Others say David Cameron is the man to do it: his nettle-grasping instincts may have been honed at Eton but voters at the moment seem prepared to forgive this.

My personal opinion is that international hairdresser John Frieda holds the key (at least that's one more vote than Nick Clegg). The king of coiffing may prefer to tease the barnets of the rich and famous, but you can't accuse 'our John' of forgetting his roots. Literally. For John has just launched a product that could well turn the farming industry around.

Looking back at 2007, the weather was responsible for a big tranche of misfortune. While droughts blighted Australia, floods descended on Europe. Thousands of acres of prime cropland were wiped out as a result of the downpours in Britain, and from then on the news got worse. Foot-and-mouth reared its ugly head again and then we had the 'pleasure' of welcoming blue tongue disease from across the Channel. You know the rest.

So all hail Mr Frieda. No promise of funding or subsidy from Mr Frieda's lips, just an utterly revolutionary product which pledges to protect against rain, humidity, wind and sun. The blurb hails its "exceptional shielding technology" which protectively seals hair from the negative effects of any weather condition. Not only that but its flexible polymers loosely bind lightweight strands of hair to make it more able to withstand the wind.

And let us not forget the cheeky little UV protectors which repel the sun, plus the magical static resistance which balances positive and negative charges in the air.

You may think this has little to do with farmers, but are they not the vainest creatures of all? Looking back through history, mud has been regularly hailed as the soother of wrinkles, the eraser of aches and the giver of new life.

Spas up and down the country are charging hundreds of pounds for the privilege of wrapping you up in a layer of mud and leaving you to bake like a housebrick while they are slapping it on to faces, around eyes and into hair to show off its miraculous healing properties.

"Don't you feel better?" the therapist will coo, as she uses an embalmed pig's trotter dipped in rosewater to scrape away the toughened earth without realising that the answer is obviously 'yes': mud off is better than mud on.

But while you require the assistance of Securicor to pay for the treatment, our farmers have been trowelling it on every day for nothing. Countless agricultural organisations moan that the average age of a farmer is 59 as they push for new blood to enter the industry, but is it any wonder?

These boys are the Cliff Richards of the field and there's no needle laced with Botox in sight. And ever wonder why their boots last for ever?

Come to think of it, perhaps these weather-proofing properties could be applied elsewhere. How much do you think it would cost to coat a 40-acre field of potatoes this April? You might not see that on the next Mastercard advert but plenty of farmers will be thinking about it the next time the clouds gather.