What the Covid19 Pandemic Might Have Taught the US (and Others) About Food?

It is claimed that the Covid19 pandemic has "exposed the cracks in the US food (supply) system". Perhaps, people might now be able to come up with some solutions (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/15/covid-coronavirus-us-food-system-pandemic-cracks). In the early phase of the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, lots of food in the US had to be dumped by producers. There was no way of getting it to people. In spite of this, supermarket profits rocketed (literally, in the case of Amazon), as food insecurity increased from 11 to 15%. One obvious problem appears to be the existence of powerful monopolies. Nearly 80% of everyday grocery items are supplied by a tiny number of companies. For example, four firms control 50% of the entire chicken processing market. To keep their power, monopoly firms are prone to adopt a 'just in time' operating basis to maximise profits. There is very limited storage capacity for foods, to provide resilience against shortages. This may work for car manufacturing but doesn't really suit food production, processing, transport and sales. Monopolies even impact on the activities of food banks and food stamp programmes. These 'hunger-alleviating' schemes are all tied to a small number of superstores and supermarkets. There might well be benefits for keeping food provision more 'local'. The basic 'take home message' of the analysis, is that "hunger, malnutrition and famine are not caused by inadequate amounts of food. They are caused by the political failures that restrict peoples's access to adequate food". This is hardly a new insight but we would do well to remember it as extreme weather events impact on food supply.