Michael Pollan

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In "A Flood of U.S. Corn Rips at Mexico" (Commentary, April 23), Michael Pollan blames American farmers for destroying the viability of Mexico's corn industry. But the Mexican agriculture sector is thriving. The central premise of his article is wrong. The U.S. sells mostly yellow corn that goes into animal feed for Mexico's beef, pork and poultry production. Corn produced by Mexican farmers is mostly white corn for human consumption. The small amount of U.S.-produced white corn sold to Mexico for human consumption offsets production deficits due to unrealized production, droughts or other factors.

California restricts billboards along rural freeways, but there's a spot on Interstate 5 near Coalinga that's a better advertisement for vegetarianism than any Madison Avenue genius could ever devise. It is Harris Ranch, an 800-acre feedlot and meat-processing operation whose smell assaults passersby long before the panorama of thousands of cattle packed atop layers of their own manure appears. It's not without reason that wags have dubbed the place "Cowschwitz.":Cowschwitz.JPG Author Michael Pollan, whose 2006 bestseller, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," holds a high place amid a growing body of popular literature and scientific research critical of industrial agriculture, told an interviewer last year that the sight of Harris Ranch was one of the things that caused him to change the way he ate. This week, Harris Ranch Beef Co. Chairman David E. Wood got his revenge.

An article about opium poppies got Harper's magazine banned from a federal prison in Florida. The high-toned literary magazine's April cover story, "Opium, Made Easy," chronicles author Michael Pollan's passage from innocent gardener to potential felon last summer as he learned how easily opium could be made from poppies growing in his yard.