Peter Townsley, a microbiologist from British Columbia, hood-winked organic growers into believing his fertilizer featuring fish guts and chicken feathers was organic.
In fact he was spiking it with nitrogen derived from a byproduct of lysine production from soybeans at an ADM plant at Decatur, Ill. It was a substance banned for organic production.
Kenneth Nelson, an American, was doing the same thing.
Together they are believed to have marketed more than $50 million worth of their fertilizers, mainly in California, in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Farm Journal has produced a feature article about the scammers and how it took years for an organic regulator to track down enough proof to charge the two crooks.
He eventually got enough evidence through the help of a whistleblower.
Townsley hid his cheap nitrogen in a tank below floorboards in his production facility.
Nelson was more brazen and hooked hoses to railway cars to siphon his nitrogen into his production tanks.
Nelson was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and ordered to pay $9 million in restitution. His son murdered him in 2018.
Townsley was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $125,000 in 2012.
