Short food chains narrow the gap between producers and consumers, but when food is traded through wholesalers and when supermarkets sell their own brands, active efforts are undertaken to make farmers anonymous.

This never really occurred to me until Vera Kuijpers, from the organic farm and farm shop Het Eikelenhof in north-eastern Limburg, told me about her latest experience with Biofresh, one of the major organic wholesalers in Belgium.