Monsanto hasn't been a separate company for years: Bayer bought them out for 63 billion in 2018: A coup for the Monsanto CEO, as Bayer's total market cap today is 34 billion, and that includes all the pharma and chemical work too, not just crop science.
When they were independent, their legal team had a very successful track record, but I am told the majority of them just retired with the very large windfall they got out of that merger. Given that Bayer has a different CEO than when the merger occurred, it'd not be crazy if Bayer jettisoned all of crop science away. For all the concerns about Roundup, I'd expect the Dicamba legal risks to weigh down the value of keeping crop science at all.
It might not be remembered as as silly a merger as AOL acquiring Time Warner, but it's close.