FutureProof is a collaboration between HuffPost and Unearthed , Greenpeace UKs journalism unit

Earlier this year, Americans learned what it looks like when a food system reliant on industrial agriculture, near monopolies and exploited laborers breaks down.

Just two months into the pandemic, the meat industry in the most powerful nation in the world was buckling.

In March and April, COVID-19 swept through meatpacking plants, infecting thousands of workers. In Colorado, an outbreak at a huge JBS beef processing facility killed six workers. In South Dakota, as cases surged in a Smithfield pork plant, officials offered bonuses to employees who kept coming to work (although the company said any worker missing work due to COVID-19 exposure or diagnosis would still get the money). By November, more than 11,000 Tyson Foods workers had been diagnosed with COVID-19 9% of its total workforce .

It was like drinking out of a fire hose, said reporter Leah Douglas, who began tracking COVID-19 outbreaks across the food system in April. The pace of the spread was so intense.

On April 22, Douglas published the first version of a map with approximately 40 outbreaks. Now, the map blooms with orange, blue and pink bubbles, a visualization of the more than 73,600 COVID-19 cases and 336 deaths among food sector workers. Meatpacking workers have accounted for more than 49,000 of those cases.

The sheer size of todays meatpacking facilities makes them perfect incubators for the spread of a virus like this, said Douglas. In an industry intent on efficiency, workers stand shoulder to shoulder for hours in wet and unventilated areas. They share bathrooms, cafeterias, and sometimes housing and transportation.

It didnt take long for the U.S. meat industry to reach a breaking point. Cases surged, plants closed, and suddenly the U.S. was facing shortages. By May, 1 in 5 Wendys fast-food restaurants was completely out of beef .

That even one facility with 3,000 workers shutting down for a week could have a demonstrable effect on the national food supply, said Douglas, That was startling to a lot of people.

The impact of COVID-19 on Americas food system is a wake-up call. A near-direct result of humanitys destruction of nature most notably increased levels of deforestation, pollution and habitat ruination the pandemic can be seen as a warmup, not just for future disease outbreaks, but for the intensifying climate crisis that threatens the systems we rely on to survive.

For all the consumer-facing, shrink-wrapped elegance of the modern food system, the pandemic has exposed its fragility.

Alongside the public health crisis, poverty and food insecurity have skyrocketed this year. As of July, 29 million Americans said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat.

At the same time, Americans were confronted with images and stories of farmers forced to dump milk, destroy crops, and euthanize their livestock as processing facilities and restaurants shut down.

These contradictions between food waste and hunger, said Phil Howard, a social scientist and professor at Michigan State University, are a result of an industrial food system really designed not to feed people but rather to increase the power of a few dominant firms.

For the last two decades, Howard has studied the consolidation of the food system . Hes documented large companies gobbling up smaller ones, mergers between corporate powerhouses, increased foreign ownership, and deceptive marketing that obscures the trend of monopolization.

Today, six companies control two-thirds of the U.S. meat supply. Whereas meatpacking workers once earned relatively high wages, the last four decades have seen a chipping away of wages and workplace safety protections for an often exploited workforce , largely made up of immigrants and workers of color .

Of course, its not just meat, and its not just the U.S.

Every part of todays global food chain from seeds and farm equipment to the supermarket shelf is affected by the trend of corporate consolidation. More than 60% of global seed sales , for example, are made by just four companies.

We have been led to believe that Big Agriculture is the most efficient and effective way to feed a growing population, but this argument ignores the damage it does . Its a heavily subsidized social and environmental liability.

Because a handful of companies control markets, farmers are seeing incomes fall as they are forced to pay higher prices for inputs and accept lower prices for the products they grow. Globally, farmers are also losing agency over their own farms, as corporations increase control of production through predatory contracts .

The environmental costs are enormous. Pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and the fragmentation of natural landscapes are increasing. Fertilizer runoff drains from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, creating gigantic dead zones. Thousands of square miles of Brazils Cerrado considered the most biologically rich savanna in the world and a huge carbon sink have been cleared for sprawling soy plantations, the vast majority for animal feed . Habitat loss is a key contributor to zoonotic diseases , such as COVID-19, that spread from wild animals to humans.

All the while, industrial farming practices destroy the soil on which they rely, requiring more fertilizer and more land.

Industrial agriculture wants us to believe that feeding the world is a one-size-fits-all problem, requiring increased production to feed a growing population. But as we charge headlong into an uncertain future, truly feeding the world will require uprooting deep-seated institutions of power, and embracing diverse methods of food production that work with local ecosystems, not against them.

Looking to Indigenous agricultural practices informs part of the path forward, as does deploying newer low-impact farming practices. Farmers and scientists all over the world have direct experience in creating more equitable, ecologically sound food systems.

The rolling green hills of Chianti are dotted with vineyards. The Italian region sends about 70% of its famous red wine around the world. But, in common with many other export-oriented agricultural regions, there are few farmers in Chianti growing foods that people in the area can actually eat. Lorenzo Costa is trying to buck this trend.

He is the only farmer in the town of Gaiole in the heart of the region, Chianti Classico who is not growing wine grapes. Costas 22-acre farm slopes with 300-year-old terraces, planted with 18 different crops, including lentils, potatoes, olives and saffron. His products, purchased by neighbors and local chefs, often dont travel farther than 10 miles, and he says thats the point. Although Chianti Classico is an agricultural region, it produces almost no table foods.

For Costa, his product diversity is his strength. When Italy shut down early in the pandemic, he heard stories of large farms losing their single crops, due to lack of market or labor.

What we saw during COVID was that the farms that work in a monocultural way had problems, said Costa, whereas more diverse operations like his, which market directly to the consumer, were better able to withstand the crisis.

In general, local and regional food networks and shorter supply chains have been less disrupted by the pandemic, said Howard. And smaller farmers, processors and retailers have been able to weather these tenuous months better than their big-box counterparts due in part to having more flexibility and the ability to shift quickly.

Lack of flexibility poses significant risk. Take again the example of U.S. meatpacking plants. To stop the spread of COVID-19 among meatpacking workers, Douglas said, structural change is needed: fewer workers and slower line speeds. But meatpacking facilities are inherently rigid and output-oriented, and Douglas said that even in a crisis, theres not that margin for slowing down the line, even though we know it is probably the most important thing that could be done.

Industrial agricultures insistence on so-called efficiency has led also to a casualty of diversity: huge regions being transformed into monocultures miles upon miles of a single commodity crop. Almost half the worlds farmland is now dedicated to just four crops: soybeans, wheat, rice and corn.

On the one hand, these commodity crops are staple foods for the majority of the worlds population and a vital part of the global food system . But industrial monocultures often require chemical inputs that degrade the soil, reduce biodiversity and endanger workers. As many as 25 million agricultural workers are estimated to experience pesticide poisoning each year.

Monocultures are disastrous for long-term food security, said farmer and scientist Debal Deb , who founded the worlds only open-source seed bank for heirloom rice. And history reminds us of their risks. During Irelands Great Famine in the mid-1800s, about 1 million Irish people starved after the countrys potato crop was overtaken with blight. The problem? A single potato variety that proved susceptible to disease.

Its a history were at risk of repeating. A deadly fungus is currently infecting banana plantations around the world, for instance. And because more than half of bananas grown globally are of just one variety the Cavendish widespread disease potential puts the global banana supply, and the communities economically dependent on the banana industry, at serious risk.