You'll notice I didn't skip over it - I told it in terms of soft power surpluses and the diplomatic force of food. If you haven't read The End of Food you probably should. It's an impressive read.
Oh, I was thinking about the process of: 1. Hey Farmers, Uncle Sam here... here's money to grow SHITLOADS OF CORN FOR THE WAR EFFORT, 2. Hey Farmers, Uncle Sam again... umm... damn... that's a lot of corn. Like WAY too much! 3. Hey industrial food makers, Uncle Sam here, we need you to add corn to EVERYTHING to suck up this surplus, or our farmers are going to suffer. 4. Oh. And we'll subsidize it, just to ahem sweeten the pot. 5. Hey heathcare providers, Uncle Sam here, why are Americans so fat and lazy? Have some money to research the topic. 6. Healthcare researchers: because we eat too much sugar/corn. We need to cut back and eat real food. Not processed cheese food product. 7. HEY NOW! WHAT ABOUT THE FARMERS!! THAT's ANTI-AMERICAN! Result: Today's supermarket.
Yeah but you're forgetting step 0.5: 0.5 Hey, Farmers, Uncle Sam here... we've discovered that we can radically influence the domestic and foreign affairs of half the world by using food as a carrot and/or stick. Therefore, the more food we have, the bigger the carrot and/or stick. The rest of it flows from that. Our agricultural policy is designed around massive surpluses for tactical export. Whenever we have too much at home it's because everyone else is doing fine without us, much to our regret. Whenever we have too little at home... wait, what am I saying. We never have too little at home.