My personal experience is the opposite. There is no control on the produce on grandma's backyard and therefore we have no idea how much chemicals she is using. Probably she doesn't know either. But I'm sure of one thing: she definitely uses chemicals if she wants to eat (or sell) those apples. Chemical-free agriculture is more demanding and the grandma doesn't have an incentive to invest in it. After all, using chemicals is what she learned growing up and therefore is the "traditional" way.