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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America's farmers aren't growing enough organic corn and soybeans for our organic animals. Farmers in China, India and Argentina are filling the gap, but tight supplies have led to shortages. -
Most of the nation's chicken meat is grown by contract farmers who get ranked against each other when it's time to get paid. Critics say someone always ends up losing 鈥� and, too often, deep in debt.
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A new book argues that Tyson's system treats farmers like "modern-day sharecroppers." Author Christopher Leonard looks at Tyson's inner workings and the not-so-independent farmers who raise the birds. -
Many American food companies, responding to consumer demands, are looking for grain that's not genetically modified. It turns out that non-GMO corn and soybeans aren't hard to find. Years ago, grain traders set up a supply chain to deliver non-GMO grain from U.S. farmers to customers in Japan. -
Documents show that Food and Drug Administration scientists allowed 18 drugs to be sold to farmers despite a risk to human health. -
Numbers don't lie, but they can sometimes tell a misleading story. Three times in the past week, we came across farm statistics that painted a picture not quite backed up by facts on the ground. -
Farmers can now deliver data from their fields, minute by minute, to big agribusiness companies like Monsanto or John Deere. Those companies promise to use the data to help farmers make money. But some farmers worry that it could threaten their privacy and give the big companies too much power. -
If you're confused by the fight over genetically modified food 鈥� and even more if your mind is already made up 鈥� you might want to turn to an investigation of the topic carried out by the environmental website Grist. Instead of preaching to the deep-green choir, Grist's in-depth series questioned its faith. -
A small Canadian company has created a genetically engineered apple that doesn't go brown when you slice it. It's waiting for approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But some apple producers are worried that this new product will taint the apple's wholesome, all-natural image. -
Phosphorus is one of the nutrients that plants need to grow, and for most of human history, farmers always needed more of it. But excess phosphorus, either from manure or manufactured fertilizer, can run off into streams and lakes and become an ecological disaster.
