If you had told someone a few decades ago that by 2016 the company that brought aspirin to the world and the company that brought Agent Orange to Vietnam were going to team up to control a quarter of the world’s food supply, chances are you would have been labeled a loony.

Unless your name was Robert B. Shapiro. He was CEO of Monsanto from 1995 to 2000, and in 1999 he told Business Week that the company’s goal was to wed “three of the largest industries in the world–agriculture, food and health–that now operate as separate businesses. But there are a set of changes that will lead to their integration.”

With this week’s announcement that Bayer had finally succeeded in its quest to acquire Monsanto, it is hard to deny that Shapiro’s vision has been realized. Too bad for all of us that that vision is a nightmare.

To continue reading this editorial, as well as view this month’s subscriber video on the meaning of fireworks, please sign up for a website membership.

For free access to this editorial, please CLICK HERE for the Steemit post or CLICK HERE for The International Forecaster website.