The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Consider for example our French fries. The first of the quote-unquote farms I visited consisted of ten thousand acres in the Magic Valley of Idaho, divided into several dozen 135-acre crop circles—those green coins you see pressed into the dun-colored desert as you cross the American West at 35,000 feet. Each circle resembled the green face of a tremendous clock with a slowly rotating second hand. That sweeping second hand was the irrigation pivot, a perforated pipe more than a thousand feet long that delivered a steady rain of water, fertilizer, and pesticide to the emerald-green potato plants. The whole farm was managed from a bank of computers in a cinderblock control room. From the control room, the farmer could adjust the chemicals and water each circle received without ever stepping outside.