I can't talk about level of mass-food distribution in USA, being European living in EU having only visited very few parts of USA for a very little time but in g

I can't talk about level of mass-food distribution in USA, being European living in EU having only visited very few parts of USA for a very little time but in general terms: transports was and are the key to have much, much more, since the model of a self-contained starship able to produce locally 99% of it's crews needs and desire exists, unfortunately, so far, only in the fantasy domain: we made many things around the world but never all in the same place. However the mass distribution of food have also very nasty side effects: pushing agriculture toward large and specialized enterprises scattered across the globe *apparently* have raised the overall output but in practice have lowered the efficiency and resilience of agriculture. The push toward standard sizes and varieties is equally harmful: we have create a seed monopoly with hybrid varieties *explicitly* made to keep their characteristics just for one generation (one year) tie farmers to the monopoly itself EVEN WITH LAWS making hard to sell different/non-standard varieties/calibers. Similar nasty things have happen for animal farming: artificial insemination done by very few and very large entities have crushed the genetic variability of animals, surely cows produce more milk etc, but are far more fragile and so on. Long story short: exaggeration in the name of business have create a short-term hyper-abundance and now we are in trouble to keep the food production at sustainable level FOR NOW, not really knowing what to do for the future. We can't right now "coming back to the old school", but we must do our best to annihilate modern mass-distribution as it is because we are already in a mess, and the future is far nightmarish. I do not know how we can evolve, local scale farms might be self-sufficient for low dense areas, but not on scale, so not enough even to nourish the industry we need behind to have all needed gears and tools.