Purchasing Choices.

I was in good health again yesterday as I slaved under the hot sun together with Tomoe at the farm.

A question that has been on my mind recently is "When does choosing not to buy from a certain business do more harm than good?"

The farm I have been helping out at is not a completely "organic" farm. They do use some chemicals and pesticides. They do however make an effort, per an agreement with the Tokyo coop, to reduce the amount they use. In exchange, the coop agrees to buy the vegetables at a fixed price regardless of shape and individual size.

Doing this can be seen as an attempt at helping the farmer move toward a more sustainable farming method which does not use chemicals that bio-accumulate, or have adverse effects on surrounding ecosystems. In addition, because this farm is so close to Tokyo, we can have very local foods, reducing the milage and carbon emissions used to transport it.

Despite the coop's efforts to encourage this farm to use less chemicals, I find myself opting for the organic veggies. I want to support those farmers as well. I want to know that my money is causing less harm to the future. There are personal health factors as well, but I can't really talk about those considering how unhealthy some of my other lifestyle choices are.

To make it worse, seeing how much Naoki-san (the farmer I am helping) has to manage, and how few people and resources, when he seems to be doing all he can to stay afloat, I am not sure that simply buying his vegetables would even be enough of a push for him to move closer to an organic farming method -even if he wanted to.

Not to say that I really know anything about the difference between traditional farming and organic farming other than that which I have read, but it seems that to shift mid-course, even a slow, planned out shift would be a tremendous amount of work and require him to re-learn some of the methods he has grown up with.

If he is spending time "re-learning", who will be making sure the farm doesn't go bankrupt, and if he takes a "traditional" field out of commission in order to convert to organic methods, should I pay more for the low-chem veggies than I even do organic just make up for his lost volume during the transition?

Or, do I buy from full-on organic farmers, supporting them and possibly choking any hope that Naoki might have to move in that direction, inadvertently pushing him back in a less desirable direction?

What are the consequences of "boycotting" (too strong of a word here) a business that is actually making efforts to meet my demands, and needs my help to do so?