[...] Constant had quite inexplicably become one of the biggest sellers of “certified organic” feed grain in the entire country.
Records showed that in 2016 he sold 7 percent of all the corn labeled organic and 8 percent of all the soybeans carrying that designation. More than $19 million worth that year, $24 million the year before and so on every year before that back to 2010 at least.
It was impossible for him to have done that legitimately. He didn’t have access to enough organic crop acres to supply so many bushels.
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To earn the National Organic Seal, the plants from which organic grain is harvested cannot have been genetically modified. And they must be grown without help from chemical fertilizers or synthetic weed or bug killers. But for decades the government’s system for ensuring that consumers get what they are paying for has been inadequate.
It largely depends on trusting that organic farmers are honest and that the private inspectors who monitor their operations are thorough in reviewing the paperwork because there is no test to determine whether an ear of field corn, say, is organic or not.
A clever and unethical seller can successfully pass off cheaper conventionally grown grain for the more expensive organic kind and make a huge profit, if they sell a lot of it.
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With the FBI’s assistance, the USDA would go on to prove that Constant was a swindler on a grand scale: More than $140 million in fraudulent sales between 2010 and 2017 for grain that was likely worth half that.
The Star’s subsequent reporting found that, in fact, his scheme stretched back further than that, to 2007 or 2006.
Constant scammed grain buyers, meat producers and millions of American consumers for a decade or more. The organic beef and poultry countless Americans were eating during those years wasn’t organic after all.
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Until Constant’s crime became public knowledge at the end of 2018, greater attention had been focused on illicit foreign shipments of grain from the Black Sea region. Almost nothing was being said about the potential for fraud domestically.
“Which is interesting, isn’t it?” Scoles told The Star. “That we were all looking at the Turkish grain fraud and we were all upset because that horrible imported grain was depressing organic grain prices in this country, and really what was happening was the largest fraud of all was being perpetrated right in the Midwest heartland where everybody’s honest.”
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“I think he figured out that, there’s just no checks and balances to determine really whether or not a No. 2 corn was actually raised organically or not,” said Clarence Mock, a Nebraska defense attorney who represented one of Constant’s co-conspirators in the criminal case.
“They can test for GMO (genetically modified organisms) … but corn that’s not GMO, you can’t tell whether it’s been sprayed or not sprayed.”
Technically, you can, but you’re not likely to get a positive result unless the inspector hits it just right and collects a plant sample before the residues wash away.
The inspectors never hit it just right when it came to Randy Constant. And he learned from that close call with that 2007 shipment to never try passing off genetically modified grain as organic again.
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“One of the ironic aspects of all this is that nobody really lost any money,” Mock told The Star. “They turned around and sold their product, right?”
The grain buyers lost nothing. They got paid by the feed mills. The feed mills got theirs when the farmers bought the product. The farmers got their share from the distributors, who did business with the supermarkets and restaurants.
As for the shoppers who bought organic meat and poultry that wasn’t technically organic, it’s not like their health was harmed in any way, Mock said. They enjoyed their meals, even if they paid more than they should have for them.
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