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.
-
Across the country, there's a wave of interest in local food, and a new generation of young farmers wants to grow it. But many aren't buying land. Instead, they're renting it. -
A well-respected consumer advocacy organization in Germany claims that Ritter Sport's popular chocolate product contains synthetic aroma. It has ignited a fierce court battle. But Ritter Sport says the aroma is natural, extracted from plants like dill or vanilla.
-
Over the past decade, the government has been paying farmers to keep their land covered with native grasses instead of crops. But as grain prices have risen, the conservation reserve has shrunk by more than 25 percent. This decline in native grasslands means more soil erosion and less habitat for wildlife.
-
In two apparently unrelated cases this week, federal prosecutors arrested citizens of China and charged them with stealing seeds that American companies consider valuable intellectual property. Court documents offer an entertaining mixture of Midwestern farming, alleged corporate espionage and a whiff of international intrigue. -
The Food and Drug Administration Wednesday advised companies to change the labels on their drugs to make it illegal for livestock producers to use drugs for "growth promotion" or "feed efficiency." The announcement is the latest step in a long-running effort by the FDA to reduce the use of antibiotics in agriculture. -
The anti-poverty group Oxfam is asking Pepsi's shareholders to approve a resolution that, if passed, would force the company to disclose its sugar suppliers and investigate whether those suppliers are implicated in "land grabs" that unfairly take land from the poor. -
Many organic farmers are hopping mad at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Their reason? Fertilizer. The FDA, as part of its overhaul of food safety regulations, wants to limit the use of animal manure, which organic farmers call a precious resource and a basis of their farming practices. -
The Philippine disaster is an example why it increasingly makes sense to buy food close to where its needed rather than ship it across the globe. Most U.S. food aid, though, travels to hotspots from U.S. ports. Critics say that wastes time and money. -
Food labels have become battlegrounds. Government regulators, companies and food movement activists have been fighting over what belongs on the label. (GMOs? Trans fats? Claims that bran prevents heart disease?) We asked four big thinkers for their dream food label. -
The agency says trans fats, found in partially hydrogenated oils, raise the risk of heart disease. Even though food companies have drastically reduced their use of the oils, you can still find trans fat in microwavable popcorn, Crisco and all kinds of mass-produced baked goods.
