MADAM – I was more than a little upset to read Jay Rayner’s piece in a recent publication in which he really put farmers’ markets down.

He clearly only shops at farmers’ markets in London because all the ones we run in Gloucestershire and Swindon are made up of hardworking farmers, food producers and craftspeople who are basically just trying to earn a living.

Of course meat produced on a small scale farm is going to be more expensive than the meat from huge intense factory farms.

A mug made in a factory from Wilko is a lot cheaper than one thrown on a potter’s wheel, but what a dull world it would be if the only mugs we could buy were the ones from Wilko; if the only food available to us was from cheap supermarkets.

Our spending levels (per cent) on food are nowhere near what they were in the 1960s, yet people (the media) always harp on about saving money on food; the supermarkets battle it out for cheapness. But who is paying the price?

The animals pay the price; factory farming is inhumane.

The farmers pay the price; they struggle to keep their small scale farms going as they are forced to sell for below production costs (as shown in the huge decline in dairy farming).

The environment pays the price as chemicals start to massively impact our wildlife, including crucial food production creatures like bees and earthworms as reported this week.

Buying from farmers markets is a choice about where you buy your food from.

Whatever Mr Rayner thinks, it’s not about status at all but everything about choosing the kind of food production methods we support.

Plus the food is a lot better.

It really is.

Kardien Gerbrands

Fresh-n-Local markets