High Country News

High Country News is the nation's leading source of reporting on the Western United States. Through in-depth reporting, High Country News covers the West’s social, political and ecological issues.

High Country News

Behind the Fork

LETTERS • High Country News is dedicated to independent journalism, informed debate and discourse in the public interest. We welcome letters through digital media and the post. Send us a letter, find us on social media, or email us at editor@hcn.org.

Food Is Power • Consolidation, shifting politics, water rights and the myth of the cowboy all play into the region’s ability to feed itself.

The growth of grocery giants in the West • A handful of powerful corporations dominate the U.S. grocery market. Over the last few decades, these firms have consolidated their control, leaving a shrinking share of the market for local, independent grocers. Grocery giants and their supporters claim that economies of scale enable them to offer lower prices to consumers. But critics say that these conglomerates’ size gives them too much power, not only over their consumers, but also over suppliers and workers.

Behind the illusion of competition, a consolidated grocery market • Confronted by Walmart’s growing power, traditional grocers like Albertsons and Kroger responded with a spate of mergers and acquisitions starting in the early 1990s. Albertsons now owns over 1,300 stores in the West, though few of the shoppers patronizing Safeway and Haggen may realize that those stores are owned by the same firm. In December of 2024, the Federal Trade Commission blocked a proposed merger between Albertsons and Kroger after a number of Western states sued, arguing that it would further limit competition and raise prices for consumers.

Get big or get out: Consolidation in agricultural production • The small family farm holds a special place in the American imagination. Today, however, a modest and diminishing portion of our nation’s food is grown on smallholder farms. Production is shifting to larger-scale factory farms in every Western state and across nearly every commodity.

The Making of an Indigenous Food Lab • It took fighting bureaucracy, raising funds and canvassing communities to launch a program for researching and sharing Native foods.

The Pecan Problem • How Big Ag is threatening New Mexico’s water supply.

Thank you, readers!

After 85 years, Luis Torres stands strong — and optimistic

Guardians of Our Food • On the connection between old-growth forests and what’s in your fridge.

What to Make

The Road Not Taken • Trump threatened Canada, so Canada vowed to tax U.S. trucks traveling the Alaska Highway, and the whole messy reality of feeding the 49th state spilled into view.

THE KILL FLOOR • HOW AMERICA’S LARGEST BEEF PRODUCER EXPLOITS REFUGEES FOR PROFIT

DIGNIFIED • Acknowledging the work of farmworkers through art.

Eating Bitterness • For the Chinese immigrants who built the Transcontinental Railroad, food was a tool of both oppression and resistance.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Working Together Is Everything • On the joyful responsibility of cutting fish.

Heard Around the West • Tips about Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write heard@hcn.org.

#IAM THE WEST