One of the largest transactions ever seen in the global financial economy has roots that reach deep into the structures of living nature: the sale of the US corporation Monsanto was apparently influenced by the realisation among its management that ever-increasing perversion cannot be a business with a future. This reveals fundamental natural orders in an unusual way. And it has created another opportunity to recognise that humanity is rapidly heading towards the end of a self-created evolutionary cul-de-sac.
When German Bayer AG finally took over its US competitor Monsanto, certain forecasts by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) could have given the impression that the Germans had really pulled one over on the Americans. Because if what the experts at the international authority predict comes to pass, global demand for plant-based food and feed will increase by a whopping 60 per cent by 2050, while yields will steadily decline due to soil erosion and groundwater depletion, among other factors. Monsanto has been the market leader in large parts of the global trade in seeds and agricultural technology applications for many years.
This raises a key question: why did the owners sell such a seemingly unbeatable and promising company to Europe? The frequently cited answer that the motive was related to upcoming damage payments to plaintiffs who accuse the company of causing cancer through products containing glyphosate, for example, falls far short of the mark. According to many observers, the judgements against the company following the sale are not least related to the change in ownership. And many US market leaders in industries such as tobacco and soft drink production have weathered similar storms. Some large car manufacturers even got away with it when it was proven that many people had been seriously injured or killed as a result of their own technical errors.
So there must be another reason for the sale of this huge future business to the Germans. And this can only lie in one very specific fact: that intensive agriculture with genetic engineering are not a business with a bright future.
Hardly anyone had a more direct view of the relevant area of humanity’s future than the people in the inner circle of knowledge at Monsanto. For decades, they sat at the tip of the rocket, so to speak, and from there they could see where the journey was headed. In all likelihood, they realised that there was a massive wall in the direction of travel. And that, while concealing this knowledge, they should find a fool as quickly as possible who would take over the position and pay a lot of money for it.
The natural law of free evolution
To better understand the wall towards which intensive agriculture is hurtling at breakneck speed, it is best to look back at the publications of a famous 19th-century naturalist. It was Charles Darwin who, in his magnum opus ‘On the Origin of Species’, made a very fundamental observation: without a single exception, all existing species on the entire planet can be traced back to a process that has been ongoing since the beginning of life and has always been the same. In this process, the characteristics that primarily brought the most advantages to the existence of one’s own reproductive community always prevailed from generation to generation.
Darwin even wrote that his ‘entire theory would be destroyed’ if even a single example could be found in nature where a characteristic of one species had developed for the exclusive benefit of another species. He called the selection by the entire environmental pressure for one’s own constant advantage „natural selection“:
„Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any species which would be of exclusive advantage to another species, although in the whole of nature one species constantly derives benefit and advantage from the organisation of another. (…) If it could be proven that any part of the organisation of one species had been formed for the exclusive benefit of another species, my theory would be destroyed, because such a formation cannot be brought about by natural selection. Although many claims to this effect have been made in natural history writings, I cannot find a single one of them that carries any weight“ (2).
Furthermore, the English researcher emphasised the distinctive feature of our artificial selection:
‘One of the most remarkable peculiarities we observe in our domesticated breeds is their adaptation not for the benefit of the plant or animal itself, but for the benefit and pleasure of man’ (3).
Darwin has remained right to this day; no one has been able to disprove his theory. Even modern parasitology and microbiology, with their millions of descriptions, have never been able to find an example of such manipulation over generations in natural processes — not even where the mutual manipulation of genetic material — on a purely individual level — is an everyday occurrence and where things are so complex that our agriculture seems like child’s play in comparison.
Even modern „inventions“ in genetic engineering, such as the CRISPR/Cas method, are literally ancient hat in nature. The real “inventors” in this case were bacteria, which evolved the ‘gene scissors’ hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago. However, they only used them as an acute defence weapon against individual viral attackers, not to manipulate the characteristics of enemies or food organisms over generations.
It is often argued that the complete absence of such manipulation between genetic lines throughout nature is simply due to the fact that only humans have the cognitive ability to perform such a targeted action. Limited to the level of currently existing life forms, this seems to be true. But from an evolutionary perspective, the total volume of ‘ideas’ produced by organisms to gain their own advantages is undoubtedly so great that our cognitively produced approaches are vanishingly small in comparison. And if there is not a single example of manipulation of subsequent generations in this enormous volume, then there can only be one reason for this: namely, that it does not work in the long term.
The mechanics involved are actually quite simple. The manipulator specialises and relies on something that it increasingly weakens. If the manipulated reproductive community is not selected for its own primary benefit with each generation, but rather for that of another life form, then this relative weakening, for example in relation to parasites, predators, water shortage, nutrient deficiency, cold, heat, wind and other factors, is inevitable. What’s more, the ancient parasitic enemies of the weakening side will increasingly exploit this weakness and thus mutate into the manipulator’s insurmountable enemy.
The tipping point at which short-term advantages are reversed
The manipulator of the lineage of another species can – in evolutionary terms – only achieve great benefits in the short term, such as an increase in the amount of food. But in any case, it is moving towards a wall that will be reached when the effort to maintain the weakened side reaches a tipping point where the advantages are reversed into disadvantages.
This tipping point must have become visible in recent years from the vantage point at the top of the Monsanto corporation. Precisely on those fields where herbicide-resistant maize varieties created by genetic modification were produced in unprecedented quantities — because the insensitive maize could now be sprayed so conveniently — suddenly, at an equally unprecedented rate, more than twenty different ‘superweeds’ emerged that were resistant to a whole range of pesticides and unusually adaptable.
This indirectly gave a survival advantage to those variants within the ‘weed’ populations that were least sensitive to such toxins. As a result, these variants became dominant and the demand for herbicides is now increasing again. Meanwhile, insects such as the American armyworm overcame the elaborately created varieties of so-called Bt maize, which had essentially been engineered to contain an insecticide, within a few years. And now, not only were the insecticides needed again in their previous doses, but the new armyworm variants were more adaptable than ever before. These variants may now have been introduced to Africa, where, according to many experts, they could develop into an agricultural disaster in all sub-Saharan countries.
The list of known setbacks is already long — but the list of those known only to Monsanto is likely to be much longer. From the company’s cockpit, it was impossible to overlook the fact that its entire concept was a dead end and that the end was already imminent.
Quellen und Anmerkungen:
(1) CRISPR/Cas: A biochemical method for cutting and modifying DNA in a targeted manner.
(2) Charles Darwin: Über die Entstehung der Arten durch natürliche Zuchtwahl oder die Erhaltung der begünstigten Rassen im Kampfe um’s Dasein. E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagshandlung (E. Koch), Stuttgart 1876, Seite 231.
(3) Charles Darwin: Uber die Entstehung der Arten durch natürliche Zuchtwahl oder die Erhaltung der begunstigten Rassen im Kampfe um’s Dasein. E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagshandlung (E. Koch), Stuttgart 1876, Seite 49.