I heard this story on NPR yesterday while I was out running errands. Luo Yu is a Chinese farmer who’s growing organically. The story is interesting, but this portion is pretty telling (and likely not limited to China):

During his walk around the farm, Luo calls out a greeting to some farmers working in rice paddies at a neighboring farm, which is not organic.

But Luo notes that while those farmers don’t use pesticides or chemicals on the produce they grow to eat themselves, they do use pesticides on the produce that they sell — because they are going after yield.

“They’ll do whatever will earn them the most money,” he says.