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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There's a long list of pesky exceptions to the rules organic farmers have to follow for using pesticides and fertilizers. This week, a battle erupted over those exceptions. -
In eastern Kansas, ranchers burn the prairie every spring to bring back grass for grazing cattle. Environmentalists celebrate those fires because without them the delicate ecosystem would disappear. -
The giant retailer says it's adding a new line of organic food that's at least 25 percent cheaper. But a large-scale production and supply of organic food likely can't be achieved overnight. -
Scientists and food activists are launching a campaign to promote seeds that can be freely shared, rather than protected through patents and licenses. They call it the Open Source Seed Initiative.
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Aquaculture in the U.S. has lagged because of opposition from environmentalists and people living on the coast. But entrepreneurs say they've found a way to produce fish on land with little pollution. -
Climate change will likely hurt food production, raise food prices and increase hunger. But those calamities may not be inevitable, according to a group of international agriculture researchers. -
McDonald's says it will start to buy beef that's "verified sustainable" in 2016. But defining sustainable beef production is tricky because the environmental issues involved are so complex. -
Did you know how fast these green shoots, the season's iconic vegetable, can grow? Or that they come in male and female versions? Or that what we eat in the U.S. is mostly now grown abroad? -
People around the world are eating a wider range of foods. But as a whole, we are increasingly reliant on a few crops. Researchers say that increases the risk of agricultural disaster. -
Non-genetically modified farming is not organic. It's a whole lot cheaper and essentially uses conventional farming techniques. But some consumers think they're the same thing.