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 natural resources, the legacies of racism and more. But we also looked beyond the magnates who control large portions of the produce and meat that make it to market, finding small alternative food systems that are working to put power back in the hands of farmers, ranchers and ordinary Americans.
As crops are harvested around the West and another growing season draws to a close, we are pleased to bring you this special issue on who holds power over your food. Our food system is fundamentally a transactional endeavor with the land we live on, and it ought to contribute to a sustainable and healthy future for all species and landscapes. When it falls short, as it mostly does, the damage to our health, environment and the social fabric of our communities can be severe and long-lasting. We hope that this special issue of High Country News will draw attention to the troubling and surprising stories behind what we eat.
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