The last time there was real appetite for going after anti-competitive practices in the grocery business was the 1930s. The big supermarket chains basically rode that one out and have managed to keep getting bigger and more consolidated ever since.

So it’s interesting to see what seems to be more of a national willingness to challenge monopoly power (Google, Amazon, many more) turning up in the grocery sector in the form of a Colorado lawsuit to block the merger of Kroger’s and Albertson’s.

What tickles me most about this is that the Colorado Attorney General took to the road for 19 town halls to get people’s opinions on the merger, and apparently heard a lot of concerns about “stores closing, higher prices, fewer jobs, worse customer service and less resilient supply chains.”

It’s too soon to know if the suit will be successful, but still, that’s a substantial investment in talking about problems in the food system, and a lot of important dots being connected by someone who’s in a  position to mount an actual legal challenge to the behemoths.