ByBrian Tokar, New Compass
Most of the chemical “tools” taken for granted by modern agribusiness are products of warfare. Is this merely an indirect consequence of the tragic history of the 20th century, or does it suggest that the currently dismal state of our soils, fresh water supplies and rural economies is an outgrowth of agribusiness’ emergence from wartime in some important ways?
Virtually all of the leading companies that brought us chemical fertilizers and pesticides made their greatest fortunes during wartime. How can this help us understand the ever-deteriorating quality of mass produced food? And what does it tell us about the new technologies of genetic manipulation that every one of these companies posits as the centerpiece of the current generation of crop “improvement” technologies?
In 1998, as debates were heating up across Europe around the unlabeled imports of genetically engineered soybeans and corn from the United States, the editors of The Economist magazine in London published an impassioned defense of the biotech agenda in agriculture. “Agriculture,” The Economist editors wrote, “is war by other means.” Indeed, from its origins, chemical agriculture has been a form of warfare—it is a war against the soil, against our reserves of fresh water, and against all the microbes and insects that are necessary for the growing of healthy food. Since the earliest origins of modern industrial agriculture, agribusiness has been at war against all life on earth, including ourselves. An examination of the origins of today’s agrochemical technologies—and the companies that first advanced them—can reveal a great deal about where we may be heading.
During World War I, two German scientists named Haber and Bosch discovered an efficient means for the large-scale chemical synthesis of ammonia and its various nitrate derivatives. The BASF company—now the world’s fourth largest manufacturer of agricultural chemicals—commercialized this process in 1913, and their products played a central role in the orgy of mass destruction that soon followed. Huge excesses of nitrogenous compounds that accumulated during World War I provided the basis for the beginnings of the mass production of synthetic nitrate fertilizers. DuPont—now the sole owner of the world’s largest seed company, Pioneer HiBred—was the largest manufacturer of gunpowder in the U.S. during the early 19th century and the first World War. Monsanto increased its profits 100 fold during the World War, from $80,000 to well over $9 million per year, supplying the chemical precursors for high explosives such as TNT.
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