McDonald's may be part of that trend, Johnson agrees; he knows a lot of other small producers who invested too heavily too quickly, and have gone under, usually as a result of excessive debt. But at this stage, he says, anything that gets Americans eating more apples has to be good. And the consolidation trend may even end up helping him: He feels that the more farming becomes industrialized, the more his fourth-generation family business develops a unique selling point. "We let people walk through the orchard. We let the fruit hang longer on the tree, to get a good juicy flavor. People buy them and they like them, and they come back and buy them again."

The Johnsons may manage to buck the trend, but they do not deny that it exists. Erik Nicholson, the regional director of the United Farm Workers Union, many of whose members work for companies that already serve McDonald's, says he has seen it happen with potatoes and beef and sees no reason why it should not repeat itself again. "The industry becomes vertically integrated," he says. "Unless you're a grower that's tied to a supplier, you're not going to get the business. There is an inevitable increase in size. Before you know it, the packers have also become growers. They are more powerful than the state and the federal government in terms of setting standards. So small growers either grow themselves or disappear."

A journey of two hours from the Johnsons', past wandering sagebrush and over the Columbia River into Oregon, brings you to Boardman, population 2,855, where you can see what happens when the big keep on getting bigger. With 30,000 cattle, Three Mile Canyon Farms is one of the largest dairies in the United States, providing milk that eventually ends up in McDonald's cheeseburgers. The dairies are part of a 93,000-acre agrocomplex that also provides potatoes to the fast-food chain.

The makeshift nature of the trailer parks and clapboard housing is testament to the temporary migrant workers who are no longer temporary, because they no longer migrate. The condition of the housing indicates the permanent poverty in which they live. One-quarter of families in Boardman with children under 5 lives below the poverty line. "The story of industrialized agriculture," says Nicholson, "is that the big consumer starts to squeeze the producer on price, and after a while there's only one place where they can make savings: the workforce."

One way for an employer to get more for his money is to employ illegal immigrants. Renaldo Rodriguez, 34, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, lives in a trailer park with his three children and his wife. He has worked at the dairy for almost four years, where, along with a few colleagues, he places the tubes on cows teats as they revolve on a circular stage in a very clear division of labor. One sanitizes the teat, another tests the milk and wipes the teat down, another puts the tube on to start milking, and another takes it off. Their shifts, he says, used to last as long as the cows needed milking, with no overtime, and they were denied the breaks to which they were entitled until bad publicity forced management to climb down. For this, Rodriguez earns $7.75 an hour. (Three Mile Canyon Farms did not respond to several calls seeking comment for this story.)

Mexicans are now about 80 percent more likely to die in a workplace accident than native-born Americans, according to federal safety statistics. They are also far more likely to be injured. Following reports of poor working conditions at Three Mile Canyon, big retail consumers such as Safeway and Costco stopped doing business with them. But McDonald's, which has a code of conduct by which it expects all of its contractors to conform, remains.

Rodriguez shrugs when I ask him if he ever eats at McDonald's. "Sometimes," he says. But he, more than most, knows that the price of an Apple Dipper can be much, much higher than 99 cents.

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