Innholdsfortegnelse for September Vol. 57, No. 9 i High Country News

HOW MANY CORPORATIONS, lawmakers and individuals stand between you and the food you eat? How is that food created, on whose land, with whose labor and with what resources? Who controls the systems that bring food to your community? To try to answer these questions, High Country News teamed up with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit news organization. For many months, our two newsrooms have worked together to explore whose hands are on the levers that control the food systems in the Western U.S. Our findings have been at once dismaying and encouraging. The stories, essays and artwork in the following pages examine the political, economic and environmental conditions that have created our complex and often unjust food system: the exploitation of immigrants, the misuse of…

Corporate consolidation in U.S. grocery Source: USDA Economic Research Service Breaking down the West’s big grocery conglomerates Note: Walmart, Kroger, Costco and Albertsons were the four largest firms in grocery by market share in 2023, according to industry reports. To estimate the footprint of these grocery giants, HCN used USDA data on SNAP-authorized grocery stores. While not every retail location accepts SNAP, we cross-referenced the data with corporate reports and found our totals closely matched the store counts listed by the largest firms. The West’s superstore empires: 1,128 Walmart & Costco stores Walmart/Sam’s Club Costco Area where Walmart’s market share was at least 50% as of 2018 California has 307 SNAP-authorized Walmart locations Note: Alaska not to scale The rise of Walmart and other superstores since the 1980s has fundamentally…

A MUG OF NETTLE TEA steams by a fresh slice of huckleberry pie. The oven stands dormant, sinks quiet and clean. Baskets, jars of herbs and bulk ingredients like dried plums, tricolor popcorn and several varieties of seaweed adorn the shelves alongside gleaming pots and hanging garlic braids. It’s not an auntie’s kitchen on the rez, or a new Bay Area restaurant. It’s a university research lab — the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute. “We want people to feel invited into the space, to encourage them to learn with and from Indigenous knowledges and sciences,” said Cutcha Risling Baldy, who speaks and moves as though unafraid to take up space as she serves up pie and tea. At Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California, Risling…

It’s been 20 years since Laura Paskus worked at High Country News, first as an intern and later as a staff writer and editor. “I still find meaning in the work,” said Paskus, who has covered the environment in New Mexico for a long list of print, online, radio and TV outlets. “But right now, it’s easy to feel lost.” She sometimes finds solace stepping into a stream or hiking in the mountains. But lately, she has sought the counsel of elders, including HCN board member emeritus, 85-year-old Luis Torres, who served on the board longer than anyone can remember. The following is drawn from two visits earlier this summer. “I’m a hopeless optimist,” said Luis, after we devoured our chilesmothered plates at his favorite restaurant in Española, New Mexico. That…

IT’S HARD TO REMEMBER NOW — a lot has happened since — but there was a time, back in February and March, when things got rather heated along the traditionally friendly, extremely long and largely unguarded Canada-U.S. border. In response to President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and talk of annexing Canada, provincial liquor authorities stripped American booze from store shelves. Canadian tourism to the United States plummeted. And British Columbia’s premier, David Eby, threatened to place tolls on commercial trucks traveling from the U.S. through B.C. to Alaska along the Alaska Highway. Doing so would further increase the state’s already high cost of living and possibly disrupt its food supply chain. The Alaska Highway, or AlCan, was built in 1942 to keep the state supplied and defended in the event of…

AGAINST A VAST WASH of sagebrush and volcanic rock in Utah’s West Desert, Chris Merritt, an archaeologist with the State Historic Preservation Office, took me on a tour of the old Transcontinental Railroad’s route through Promontory Summit, from Corinne to Umbria Junction. The line was replaced during World War II by the Lucin Cutoff, which now runs straight through the Great Salt Lake, shearing off some of the original line’s distance and allowing its iron tracks to be recycled for war munitions. That change turned all of the Promontory Summit settlements into ghost towns. I was visiting those sites throughout 2018 and 2019 as research for a poem commissioned by The Spike 150 committee to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Transcontinental’s completion in 1869. At the time, I was Utah’s…

DIGITAL VAMPIRES The very timely article “The big digital buildup” (August 2025) was in my hands a day after the Tucson City Council voted down, by unanimous approval, Project Blue, which would have annexed desert property simply to enable Amazon and its front men to build data centers using Tucson city water and Tucson Electric Power. John R. Leech Tucson, Arizona All data centers should be required to produce their own energy. Their high demand is requiring electricity rates to go up and be paid for by taxpayers. We did not ask for AI; it’s being forced on us, and the people who are doing the forcing need to pay for the electricity. Gee DeMadera Via Facebook WE CAN’T FORGET THE PAST “The Presence of Sheep” (August 2025) is a…

Albertsons’ U.S. growth Albertsons stores across the West Bellingham as a case study in consolidation The shifting grocery options available to SNAP-recipients in Bellingham, Washington, from 1995 to 2024 epitomize wider trends in the West. In 1995, most of the possible alternatives were local — chains like Haggen, which was founded in the city, or independent groceries like the Community Food Co-op. By 2024, the rise of the superstores and the merger craze in the traditional grocery market had left its mark on Bellingham. Giants Walmart and Costco had entered the market, as well as Target and Trader Joe’s. Haggen and Fred Meyer were snapped up by Albertsons and Kroger respectively. Despite the arrival of these grocery behemoths in Bellingham, independent groceries have managed to survive and even increase in…

GREEN IS NOT THE COLOR one expects to see in the cactus-and-yucca-dotted Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico. But for more than a hundred miles along the I-25 corridor, between Truth or Consequences and the Texas border, a rich vein of greenery runs through the endless sea of beige. It’s a cultivated woodland made up almost entirely of a single species — Carya illinoinensis, the pecan. Native to the lower Mississippi Valley, the trees were imported here, to the Mesilla Valley, in the early 1900s. In those early years, they were planted sparingly; the average precipitation is a scant 9 inches per year, hardly enough to sustain this Eastern hardwood. It wasn’t until after 1916, when the Rio Grande Project and its centerpiece, Elephant Butte Dam, were completed, that the…

ASSUME FOR A MOMENT that our Earth is a bubble, containing finite physical material, moisture and the solar energy that’s delivered to us each day. Anything organic is ultimately food for something else. Our own species’ relatively narrow food requirements are what we’re usually most concerned about, and the solution to meeting our needs is not complicated. To provide food for all, rather than having billions among us go hungry, we need more efficient food production and better foods and/or fewer people: Impossible Burgers rather than Wagyu beef. Backyard tomatoes rather than mass agriculture that’s produced far away and flown, then driven, vast distances to our dinner tables, etc. At scale, this requires policy change, but also cultural change. Hence swapping out light bulbs does play a part in these…

AROUND 7 A.M. ON DEC. 12, 2006, half a dozen buses and a small convoy of government vans quietly encircled the Swift & Company beef packinghouse on the northeast edge of Greeley, Colorado. It was just 19 degrees that morning, the sun not fully up, as local law enforcement exited their vehicles and formed a perimeter around the cavernous plant — one of the nation’s largest, where thousands of cattle were butchered every day. Inside, line workers, many of them Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants the government suspected of using false papers to get hired, had already donned hard hats and chainmail gloves and gone to their workstations, hooks and knives in hand, ready for the massive chain-driven conveyor system to bring the first carcasses of the day. Drovers had just…

Notice to our advertisers: You can place classified ads with our online classified system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. Sept. 1, 2025, is the deadline to place your classified ad in the October 2025 issue. Email advertising@hcn.org for help or information. Advertising Policy — We accept advertising because it helps pay the costs of publishing a high-quality, full-color magazine, where topics are well-researched and reported in an in-depth manner. The percentage of the magazine’s income that is derived from advertising is modest, and the number of advertising pages will not exceed one-third of our printed pages annually. EMPLOYMENT & EDUCATION Caretaker/Handyman — Spend the summer doing what you love in California’s Trinity Alps Wilderness. Trinity Mountain Meadow Resort is looking for someone who is skilled at fixing things and solving problems. info@mountainmeadowresort.com. 530-423-5304. mountainmeadowresort.com.…

119 Grand Avenue PO Box 1090 Paonia, CO 81428 U.S. $5 | Canada$6 GRETCHEN GROENKE (SHE/HER) Co-founder of Four Corners Food Coalition, Fourth World Farm and Mancos Food Share Mancos, Colorado M. KARLOS BACA (SOUTHERN UTE/DINÉ) (HE/THEY) Co-founder of Four Corners Food Coalition, Fourth World Farm, and I-Collective Mancos, Colorado AMBER LANSING (ACOMA/DINÉ/SHAWNEE) (SHE HER) Co-founder of Four Corners Food Coalition, executive director for Dolores Family Project and Dolores Community Garden Dolores, Colorado Mesa Verde, Sleeping Ute and Dibé Nitsaa (Big Mountain Sheep) surround this southwest Colorado valley, but its Indigeneity does not exist anymore. Rematriation began as a necessary response to the introduction of whiteness, capitalism and patriarchy. Now, our landscape is covered by hayfields, and we and our plant and animal relatives are surrounded by invasive species. But…

MANY COMMUNITIES have foods that define them: Los Angeles has tacos, Green River, Utah, has melons, while New Mexico’s Hatch Valley is famous for its green chiles. Historic power dynamics — from colonization to migration — have always influenced how and why people began growing, cooking and consuming these symbolic dishes and crops. Today, these foods and those who prepare, raise and sell them carry cultural power; people travel hundreds of miles to buy a juicy Crenshaw or sweet canary melon from a familyrun stand in Green River. And yet the farmers themselves often struggle to stay afloat. They lose access to markets as large companies buy up smaller, locally run grocery stores. Most grocery stores across the West trace back to a few major corporations. Whether you’re visiting King…

Your generous and dedicated support makes these pages possible. If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution, please scan the QR code to the right, visit hcn.org/give2hcn, call 800-905-1155 or mail a check to: P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. Anonymous (15) Gant Kang Bob Lyon Norman 2 Fund Emigrant Trails Greenway Nathaniel Scholz ALASKA Debra & Thomas Corbett | Anchorage John DeLapp | Anchorage ARIZONA Linda Biggar | Glendale Eric Coons | Mesa Donnette Hyde | Peoria John M. & Linda Powers | Phoenix Charles Schulz | Tucson Keith & Janet Sewell | Rio Rico Chris Stidley & Ed Bedrick | Tucson CALIFORNIA Valdis Boven | Oakdale Jessica Cattelino | Culver City Peg & David Engel | Del Mar Scott & Claudia Hein | Concord John Hennessy |…

when A & D come to dinner? Last time: minestrone and vegetable tart--roast asparagus and carrots on feta creamed with a clove of garlic on crisp baked pastry. Dessert? Those thin and crunchy gingersnaps with oats and buckwheat? What else? Cold outside in mid-March, so not ice cream. Not rice pudding cake. Also not dried figs cooked in sherry. A year ago it was D who cracked the blown glass bowl, although it could have been any of us. Figs and bowl thrown into the trash. Don’t use a silver spoon to cut figs in a blown glass bowl. But this dinner: maybe chard, pine nut, and white bean filo strudel (chard stems add crunch, miso adds umami) with red pepper coulis followed by those small Japanese cheesecakes that never…

WHEN I STARTED THIS WORK, I didn’t know where I was going to go with it, but I like creating things using discarded materials. To me, it’s a platform to talk about the experiences of farmworkers in the fields. It’s important to tell the public who is behind our food production, to highlight the farmworkers. I want to raise awareness of their presence, of their contributions, of their humanity. Dignify farmworkers — that’s the goal. Historically, the more vulnerable communities have worked the fields, here in the United States and abroad. It’s amazing to me that this group of people have been denied a dignified life when they are the ones who are actually picking the food that sustains us. I work in the fields, and whenever farmworkers are taken…

An Inuit woman explores living in direct relationship with the land, water and plant and animal relatives of Alaska. EVERYONE HAD A JOB. The men and boys drove the boats upriver to dip the nets in the river and seine. The women waited. Never wondering. There were always enough. The salmon that filled the boats when they returned weren’t huge — humpies aren’t — maybe a foot long. But they were plentiful and made for good drying. My cousins and I played in the water. Swimming. Doing somersaults or handstands, holding our breath, eyes closed tight, our hands squishing in the mud on the slough side of the sandbar island our family called Eaton Station, in the Unalakleet River. Eaton Station: The best resort. We played badminton in the sand.…