Foiling the Great Aluminum Conspiracy

Calemeo – by Robert Palletier

THE CONSPIRACY IS as nefarious as it is ingenious: daily, thousands of commercial aircraft crisscross the skies, spewing out poisonous “chemtrails” that eventually settle earthward.  The main component of this toxic vapor is aluminum oxide, and its purpose is to poison the world’s organic crops and create an environment where only aluminum tolerant crops can survive.  The owner of a patent for aluminum resistance genes would therefore garner huge profits, and eventually acquire global domination of the food supply.  That evil entity is, of course, Monsanto, the agribusiness behemoth best known for its line of herbicide-resistant and insect-resistant genetically modified crops.  

Except it isn’t true.  Like all pseudoscientific conspiracy theories,  the Monsanto/aluminum chemtrails myth starts with a grain of truth,  but quickly goes off the deep end with paranoia and scientific illiteracy.  Aluminum toxicity is a major problem limiting crop yields,  especially in parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.  In Brazil alone, aluminum toxicity in the cerrados  (wastelands) prevents crop cultivation in 500 million acres of potentially arable land an area surpassing America’s available cropland.

Aluminum stunts root growth, which restricts absorption of soil nutrients and makes plants more vulnerable to drought.

However,  chemtrail conspiracy pushers go off track on several counts.  Although aluminum toxicity is a global concern,  the problem is not new:  it has been a recognized plant toxicant for over a century.  Nor is aluminum per se the actual problem:  the real culprit is excessive soil acidity.

As a major component of clay,  aluminum already occurs naturally in soils,  which are comprised on average of 7 percent aluminum.  In neutral or slightly acidic soils,  this occurs primarily as harmless aluminum oxide,  which can’t be absorbed by plants.  However,  as acidity increases,  the clay dissolves and releases mobile aluminum ions,  which are readily absorbed through the roots,  where they cause DNA damage and cessation of root growth.  Spraying powdered aluminum or aluminum oxide from aircraft would be entirely innocuous,  since it is in a form that plants can’t absorb.

The delivery of aluminum via chemtrails is also completely ludicrous:  The debunking site metabunk.org offers some illuminating calculations.  Given that the US has 470 million acres of cropland and that topsoil is six inches deep,  this comes out to 290 billion cubic meters of topsoil.

Therefore to raise the aluminum level by a mere one percent would require the application of 2.9 billion tons of aluminum.

Aluminum is obtained principally from bauxite (50 percent aluminum),  of which 200 million tons are mined globally each year.  This means that 40 years of global bauxite production would be required for arable land alone, which represents only one fifth of the total land area, and assumes that the chemtrails can be targeted to those areas.

Regarding resistance genes,  researchers from Brazil and Cornell University discovered that some varieties of sorghum could tolerate high soil aluminum by secreting citric acid through the roots, which bound the aluminum ions into an insoluble compound.  It is for this naturally-occurring sorghum gene that Monsanto has obtained a patent in 2009.  The ability to introduce it rapidly into desirable crop varieties by recombinants techniques could shave years off extensive conventional breeding programs.  However,  Monsanto is not alone in investigating this approach  Competing agribusinesses are also actively engaged,  as well as numerous international nongovernmental research foundations and universities.

Is this a “global conspiracy” for world domination, or addressing global food insecurity?

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