Like all the best con artists, Randy Constant was a charmer, hard not to like.
Big hearted. Good listener. You’d never have guessed that the father of three, grandfather of five was a liar, cheat and serial philanderer who masterminded one of the biggest and longest-running frauds in the history of American agriculture.
“He was a wonderful person,” an old friend told The Kansas City Star. “He just had that other side to him.”
And then some.
“What he done shocked me to death,” said Stoutsville, Missouri, farmer John Heinecke, who did business with Constant for years. “I didn’t know he was that kind of corrupt.”
Church-going family man. School board president. Agribusiness entrepreneur. That’s the caring, accomplished Randy Constant people knew in Chillicothe, Missouri, which advertises itself on road signs as the “Home of Sliced Bread.”
Until the full story started to emerge last summer, Constant seemed like one of the best things to come out of Chillicothe since those first pre-cut loaves appeared on store shelves 90 years ago.
He made a good living buying and selling organic grain. He raised tilapia by the ton inside a former Walmart, shipping the farm-raised fish to Whole Foods and hundreds of other supermarkets nationwide.
His reputation earned him prominent mention in Successful Farming magazine’s June 2017 special issue as one of “10 Successful Farmers to Watch” in America.Previously:
What the magazine’s editors didn’t know was that Constant was already being closely watched. On a humid Tuesday morning later that same month, a line of black SUVs rolled down Oaklawn Drive and parked outside the four-bedroom, Cape Cod-style house that Constant shared with his wife, Pam.
“We have a search warrant,” agents from the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Agriculture said as they appeared at the couple’s front door around 9:30 a.m.
For five and a half hours, investigators sorted through records from Constant’s business and personal life. There was a lot of material to process because 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% of all the corn labeled organic and 8% 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.
“Somebody who was competing with him in the organic market noticed that he was flooding the market with too much grain and at too low of a price for what organic grain should be sold for,” federal prosecutor Anthony Morfitt told The Star.
That’s what got the whole thing started. A tip rather than the government’s flawed oversight program for the organic food industry. For many years, that inspection system had failed to detect Constant’s fraudulent scheme. Now the feds were onto him.
There was plenty of temptation to cheat. Organic grain costs more to produce per bushel than conventionally grown crops and therefore demands a higher price. After processing, it is fed to cattle and chickens, whose meat is also sold at a premium in stores and restaurants because a growing number of consumers are willing to pay more for protein that comes from animals raised on a natural, organic diet.
There’s no proof that the meat is any better for you, but some people believe it is and others have philosophical or environmental reasons for preferring it.
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.....MUCH MORE
Aug. 20, 2019
Commodities: Perp of America’s Largest Organic Food Fraud Sentenced To 10 Years, Kills Self
