The highly optimized manufacturing operation has made farming into a powerful tool of statecraft internationally. Other countries become dependent on our beans and corn to [indirectly] feed their people or for inputs for their own industries. That gives us diplomatic leverage.

Once you start thinking about that, a lot of the mystery or 'inefficiency' of farming in the USA makes more sense. For example, the subsidies to grow corn and soy but not kale and squash or whatever was in the article- growing kale and squash isn't a strategic priority.

It’s worth noting that this industrial scale is only possible with pesticides and herbicides that are very bad for insects and suspected hormone disruptors and carcinogens, etc.