We love getting letters! Especially anonymous ones! Especially anonymous ones with scandalous import! This missive arrived today via secret spy plane. Consider it an anonymous op ed.

Why do I love Shut Up Foodies?  Because I work for a big, old farmers market.  I mean old —- one that’s been serving a metropolitan area for over a century.  Doing the basic work of a farmers market-feeding the community.

Then the bandwagon starts barelling down the street, and everybody is hopping on with no thought to the consequences. Farmers markets have been disneyfied; cleaned-up, prettied-up, touristed.  And the more the merrier, as johnny-come-lately once-a-week markets start springing up seven days a week.

What does this do to farmers?  How can they continue to work their farms when they are expected to tear from market to market?  What happens to the old, established community markets when these boutique markets spring up?  And without those old-established, community markets, the community does not get fed.  It’s back to corner stores with junky processed food.  Only the foodies get the bounty, which as the Salon article pointed out, gets more and more expensive.

So feed the rich.  Screw the poor.  That’s not fixing the food system.  It’s just another bad system.

While this is currently contrarian thinking, it is not sour grapes.  It’s serious and has serious consequences.