by Violet pearls. It is one of the ways to call blueberries, a fruit that is still incipient for Argentine consumers but highly coveted abroad. Almost everything that is produced is exported. The north of the province of Córdoba is one of the places where production is concentrated. It is harvested between September and November and the practice requires something key: let it not hailthat it does not rain intensely.
The lilac fields, then, must be preserved from inclement weather, as happens with many other crops. If it hails, bye business. The only way to avoid this is by resorting to a controversial practice, prohibited in many regions and not recommended by the UN: climate manipulation. For those who live in the agricultural world, it is not new.
“Storm breaking aircraft” are used. Aircraft attack clouds like kamikazes against aircraft carriers in World War II. They literally shoot bombs against these gaseous spaces and manage to deactivate nature or directly intervene in it. The consequence is beneficial for blueberries. But detrimental to everything else. The consequence is drought and its immediate derivative: economic asphyxiation for hundreds of producers dedicated to other activities that do require rain, in whatever form.
That is happening now in Traslasierra. The hundreds of producers who are affected by the lack of rain have been denouncing it in a thousand ways. In court they have done so with two complaints filed and also with banners and campaigns in which they cry: LET IT RAIN! ENOUGH BREAKING STORMS! They are experiencing a dramatic situation: dry rivers, dry docks, dry lagoons, thirsty farms, dead animals, firefighters who distribute water to supply the population, neighbors and producers losing everything.
In Traslasierra they target the Rodríguez Saa family. They say they own plantations. They also talk about the company that offers the service, based in Fargo, North Dakota, since 1961. The company is called Time Modification Inc. Paradoxically, it emerged in the Soviet Union. But it chose the geographical heart of capitalism to expand and prosper. On its website, the company offers a variety of services: operational programs to increase precipitation, increase snow cover, hail suppression, fog dissipation. Technical assistance and technology transfer for all of them. One of the provinces that uses this service the most is Mendoza. Vineyards are prone to severe hail damage.
Clarion He contacted Alberto Rodríguez Saá about this issue. He was blunt in his response: “I don’t own any blueberry fields. It’s a myth. Nonsense. I think there was a pharmaceutical company with that, from La Plata, but not anymore. Nice project. I love blueberries. But it’s a It’s a lie to say that I have fields. And the other thing is nonsense. It’s like Horacio Quiroga’s rain-making machine. Read that story. You can’t make it rain, nor can you make it rain.”
Meanwhile, they say the planes have appeared again in the north of Córdoba and residents are calling for the practice to be banned. It works as follows: inside the clouds, the droplets remain in a liquid state while still being 30 degrees below zero. When it comes into contact with another droplet, dust or any other element in the air, it solidifies and falls in the form of hail. Storm planes launch metal bombs and the pressures generated by the explosions create a condensation nucleus that causes the drop to fall without solidifying. Goodbye hail.
“Since the mid-1950s, the UN determined that nOr is this type of practice recommended?, is not positively beneficial. The cost-benefit is negative. Drought is the answer to climate manipulation. In Mendoza it began to be used with the help of the Soviets, they exchanged meteorological rockets for wine, those rockets were launched into the storms with anti-hail bombs,” explained meteorologist Osvaldo Canziani. “In Spain we also did studies and we never obtained positive results, in Peru too and they recognized that it was not good to use those bombs, but business is business, and they are going to continue using it to protect the plantations.”
This week a group of residents and producers from San Juan, Córdoba, La Rioja and San Luis arrived in Buenos Aires to present a petition to the ministry of defense of the nation. They asked Minister Luis Petri for direct help. They told him the same thing that a request for Clarion, Marcelo, one of the affected producers: “When we talk about the storm-breaking planes, many tell us that that is not true. But we are seeing them at the very moment in which they operate. We see them enter the cloud and in a few seconds the cloud disappears,” he explains. He offers the photos, the evidence.
Cecilia Sustersic, an expert on the subject, is a member of the Clean Skies organization. From there they denounce the incursions of climate modification that different sectors carry out in different regions. “In each province there are complaints. There are other places where storms are cut to produce alfalfa. Arab investors. In the tomato industry too. In San Juan, the same thing happens with the olive. And in Mendoza, of course, the videos. Blueberries are one of many. In each region, storms intervene for certain crops. It is not new. But climate change has made it worse. It is time to ask the Government to intervene. You cannot celebrate the drought, as Alberto Fernández did… he celebrated because the transgenic wheat resisted the drought. But he was unaware that everything else died.”
