One of the largest ever transactions in the global economy has a background that goes very deep into the structures of living nature: In the sale of the US corporation Monsanto, insights at the upper management level apparently played a role in the fact that ever-increasing perversion cannot be a business of the future. Thus, in an unusual way, fundamental natural orders become apparent here. And so another opportunity has arisen to realise that humanity is heading at top speed towards the end of a self-generated evolutionary cul-de-sac.
When German Bayer AG finally took over its US competitor Monsanto, one might have had the impression, looking at certain forecasts by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), that the Germans had now really taken the Americans to the cleaners. Because if what the experts of the international agency predict comes true, the global demand for plant-based food and animal feed will increase as much as 60 percent by the year 2050, while yields will steadily decline due to soil erosion and groundwater recession, among other things.
So there is one central question: Why did the owners sell such an apparently unbeatable company to Europe? The answer often given, that the motive is related to pending compensation payments to plaintiffs who accuse the company of causally causing cancer, for example through products containing glyphosate, falls far short of the mark. According to many observers, the judgements against the company after the sale are not least related to the change in ownership. And many US market leaders of industries such as tobacco and soft drink production have weathered similar situations well. Some large car manufacturers even got over it when many people were seriously injured or died as a result of their own technical faults.
So there must be another reason for the sale of this huge future business to the Germans. And this reason can only lie in a very specific fact: that intensive agriculture and agricultural genetic engineering are not a business of the future at all.
Hardly anyone had a more direct view of the relevant area of humanity’s future than the people in the inner circle of knowledge of the Monsanto corporation. For decades, they sat at the top of the rocket, so to speak, and could see from there where the journey was going. In all likelihood, this made them realise that there was a massive wall in the direction of flight. And that, concealing this realisation, they should find a fool as quickly as possible to take over the position and even pay a lot of money for it.
The natural law of free evolution
For a better understanding of the wall towards which intensive agriculture is moving at breakneck speed, it is best to look back at the publications of a famous natural scientist from the 19th century. It was Charles Darwin who, in his major work “On the Origin of Species”, established something very fundamental: without a single exception, all existing species on the entire planet can be traced back to a process that has always been the same since the beginning of life. In this process, from generation to generation, those characteristics have always prevailed which, as a matter of priority, brought the most advantages to the existence of their own reproductive community.
Darwin even wrote that his entire theory would be “annihilated” if even a single example were found in nature in which any characteristic of one species arose for the exclusive benefit of another species. He called selection by all the environmental pressures for one’s own constant advantage “natural selection”. Following some regarding citations:
“Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species; though throughout nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by, the structure of another. (…)
If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection. Although many statements may be found in works on natural history to this effect, I cannot find even one which seems to me of any weight. (…)
Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor.“
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1866. [2]
Moreover, the English researcher emphasised the delimiting peculiarity of our artificial breeding selection:
“One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal’s or plant’s own good, but to man’s use or fancy.“
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1866 [3].
Darwin has remained right to this day; no one has been able to destroy his theory. Even modern parasitology and microbiology with their millions of descriptions have never been able to prove an example of the corresponding manipulation over generations in natural processes – and this not even where the manipulation of genetic material – on the purely individual level – is an everyday business and where things are so complex that our agriculture looks like a child’s sandbox game in comparison.
Even the most modern of the alleged “inventions” of genetic engineering such as the CRISPR/Cas9 process are literally ancient hat in nature. The real “inventors” were bacteria, which evolutionarily produced the “gene scissors” hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago. However, they only used them as an acute defensive weapon against individuals of viral attackers, not for manipulative control of the characteristics of enemies or food organisms over generations.
It is often argued that the complete absence of manipulation between hereditary lineages in all of nature is simply because only humans have the cognitive capacity to produce such a directed action. Limited to the level of acutely existing life forms, this seems to be true. But viewed in evolutionary terms, the total volume of “ideas” generated by organisms for the attainment of their own advantages is undoubtedly so large that our cognitively generated approaches are infinitesimally small. And if there is not a single example of the manipulation of subsequent generations in this enormous volume, then this can only have one reason: namely, that it does not work durably.
The corresponding mechanics are actually very simple. After all, the manipulator specialises and relies on something that he increasingly weakens. If the manipulated hereditary line is not selected with each generation for its own primary advantage, but for that of another life form, then this relative weakening against parasites, predators, lack of water, lack of nutrients, cold, heat, wind and other factors is inevitable. And what is more: the ever-present ancient parasitic enemies of the weakening side will increasingly exploit the weakening for their part and thus mutate into the insurmountable enemy of the manipulator.
The tipping point at which the short-term advantages are reversed
The manipulator of the hereditary line of another species can – in evolutionary terms – only achieve significant benefits in the short term, such as an increase in the amount of food. But he is in any case moving in the direction of the wall reached when the effort to maintain the weakened side reaches a tipping point at which the advantages turn into disadvantages.
This tipping point must have become very visible within the last few years from the observation deck at the top of the Monsanto corporation. In the very 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 more than twenty different “superweeds” emerged at an equally unprecedented rate, which were resistant to a whole range of pesticides and unusually adaptable.
They had simply selected those varieties that were least sensitive to such poisons, and now the need for these agents is increasing again. Meanwhile, insects such as the American armyworm overcame the elaborately created varieties of so-called Bt maize, which had an insecticide built into them, so to speak, within a few years. And now, not only were the insecticides simply necessary again in earlier doses, but the new armyworm varieties were more versatile than ever before. Meanwhile, these variants may have been introduced into Africa, where many experts predict they could become an agricultural catastrophe in all sub-Saharan countries.
The list of known setbacks is already long – but the one that only Monsanto knew about is likely to be much longer. From the company’s cockpit, therefore, it could probably no longer be missed that its entire concept will inevitably reach a dead end, and that this end is actually already imminent.
Sources and notes:
[1] CRISPR/Cas9 method – a biochemical method to selectively cut and change DNA.
[2] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species: fourth British edition (1866), page 241
http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/1866/1866-241-c-1859.html
[3] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species: fourth British edition (1866), page 31
http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/1866/1866-31-c-1872.html