Dan Charles
Dan Charles is NPR's food and agriculture correspondent.
Primarily responsible for covering farming and the food industry, Charles focuses on the stories of culture, business, and the science behind what arrives on your dinner plate.
This is his second time working for NPR; from 1993 to 1999, Charles was a technology correspondent at NPR. He returned in 2011.
During his time away from NPR, Charles was an independent writer and radio producer and occasionally filled in at NPR on the Science and National desks, and at Weekend Edition. Over the course of his career Charles has reported on software engineers in India, fertilizer use in China, dengue fever in Peru, alternative medicine in Germany, and efforts to turn around a troubled school in Washington, DC.
In 2009-2010, he taught journalism in Ukraine through the Fulbright program. He has been guest researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1990 to 1993, Charles was a U.S. correspondent for New Scientist, a major British science magazine.
The author of two books, Charles wrote Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, The Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare (Ecco, 2005) and Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food (Perseus, 2001) about the making of genetically engineered crops.
Charles graduated magna cum laude from American University with a degree in economics and international affairs. After graduation Charles spent a year studying in Bonn, which was then part of West Germany, through the German Academic Exchange Service.
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A new report from the National Academy of Sciences knocked down some pro-GMO claims, such as that they've boosted crop yields, and urged federal agencies to change the way these foods are regulated. -
A consumer advocacy group says it's time to ban the word "natural" from food labels because it's misleading. But the quest to get the government to outlaw the word entirely faces tough legal hurdles. -
Arlo Crawford's parents started the kind of small, organic farm that's now trendy, back before it was trendy. But it was his parents' dream, not his. He's now written a book about the experience. -
A tiny fraction of America's 2 million farmers produces most of our food. They are the winners of a long-running competition for land and profits that has also drained the life out of small towns. -
A few weeks ago, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spotted an unfamiliar moth in a shipment of organic soybeans. It was a small victory in the effort to prevent the spread of exotic pests. -
Water is scarce in California, and prices are all over the map. Some farmers are paying almost 100 times more than others. Should water flow to the highest bidder? -
California produces most of America's vegetables and nuts. Yet there's little sign the drought there is creating food shortages in the U.S., because farmers are rationing water and draining aquifers. -
Coffee prices have spiked this year because of drought in Brazil and a disease that's crippling coffee production in parts of Central America. Coffee traders says prices could rise to $3 a pound. -
There are more than 2 million farmers in this country, but most of them have other jobs that bring in the money, retirement benefits and health insurance that they need. -
Chemistry is complicated; that includes ingredients in artificially flavored fizzy drinks. Soda makers bowed to pressure to drop brominated vegetable oil, but its safety hasn't been very well studied.
