Organic fraud

[AlbertaFarmer5]

How about a thread about marketing. Article from The New Yorker about a large scale fraud in the US organic Grain market. It can best be summed up by the following statement from the article.

In 2016, when the entire organic-corn output of Missouri and Nebraska was about 2.4 million bushels, Constant sold 1.8 million bushels of supposedly organic corn. His corn output that year represented about seven per cent of the national organic crop. His soybean sales represented eight per cent.
So if one crook could single-handedly pass off that much grain as organic, for that many years, and the end users and regulators legal system almost turned a blind eye to it for many years, makes one wonder how much of the entire supply maybe suspect.

This is probably the closest to a victimless crime as there could be. The only actual victims would be the honest hard-working organic farmers who had to compete against these criminals. But as the article points out, other than the GMO, the organic products were indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts, so it is a stretch to consider them to be a victim. I'm sure that processors and end users we're just grateful to find gold mine of supply in an otherwise very tight market.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/15/the-great-organic-food-fraud

[helmsdale]

I'd hate to out anyone... but I used to haul for an organic outfit that hauled a significant amount of grain out of a, let's just call it, "western canadian farm", that rented a significant amount of land from a certain group of people that have an ability to enforce no trespassing laws, and very few regulatory agencies would want to get in a pissing match with...

Cleanest organic grain I've ever seen! A half dozen JD high clearance sprayers sitting in the yard, exclusively for custom work. Yea, and those tracks in the field were for scouting purposes I'm sure...

[furrowtickler]

I'd hate to out anyone... but I used to haul for an organic outfit that hauled a significant amount of grain out of a, let's just call it, "western canadian farm", that rented a significant amount of land from a certain group of people that have an ability to enforce no trespassing laws, and very few regulatory agencies would want to get in a pissing match with...

Cleanest organic grain I've ever seen! A half dozen JD high clearance sprayers sitting in the yard, exclusively for custom work. Yea, and those tracks in the field were for scouting purposes I'm sure...

Imagine that , who would have ever thought eh ?

[agstar77]

Organic and fraud are interchangeable. The phrase there is sucker born every minute comes to mind.

[shtferbrains]

I read that or maybe similar article.
The guy was set up to provide all the required paper saying it was organic.
Some of the buyers more or less said they didn't care where it came from as long as the paper was good.
GMO tests tripped him up but if I recall he was selling like $40 million a year. He never ran out.

China is a big organic supplier.

[fjlip]

FRAUD, gee, same league of types saying "believe me" Climatards come to mind and the....you know the thing...that gets us kicked off.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I read that or maybe similar article.
The guy was set up to provide all the required paper saying it was organic.
Some of the buyers more or less said they didn't care where it came from as long as the paper was good.
GMO tests tripped him up but if I recall he was selling like $40 million a year. He never ran out.

China is a big organic supplier.

If you read the article, at least one receiver was testing for GMO and rejecting his loads load after load after load yet that apparently didn't raise enough red flags for anything to be done about it. It had been brought to the attention of The regulators on other occasions, and nothing was done about it.
Not only china, but Eastern Europe is a big supplier of our organic grains especially. And bribery is just the way business is done in many of those countries.

[shtferbrains]

There is demand for the products and some successful growers.
No an easy way to farm.
Hard enough to make a living without competing against major fraud.

[helmsdale]

There is demand for the products and some successful growers.
No an easy way to farm.
Hard enough to make a living without competing against major fraud.

One local threw in the towel... Couldn't control the weeds. They intend to get it back into shape, and then cycle back into organic. Land was depleted, so they were using cow shit as a source of nutrients. That's certainly a good idea, but unless all those cows see is established grass and well ground grains that have been run through a cleaner, it seemed all they were doing was expanding the seed bank.

There are still a few playing the game around here, but wild oats, and in particular Canada thistle are taking over! Another is shuffling paper by renting certified organic to a non-organic farmer for 2 or 3 years, then they somehow are able to get directly back into organic the first year they put a crop in... Seems there are a few boxes on forms that are getting improperly filled, and signatures placed beside legal agreements that are partially true at best, but each to their own i suppose.