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 curious twist in the contentious debate over feeding antibiotics to animals in order to make them grow faster. Evidence suggests using antibiotics for growth promotion, at least among pigs, doesn't even make economic sense. But some pork producers don't believe it. -
When it comes to antibiotics on the farm, it's not always a win-win. And when there's a fight, veterinarians are right in the middle of it, pushed back and forth by conflicting loyalties.
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Consumers in search of novelty are turning to once-obscure grains like quinoa, spelt and sorghum. But sorghum's great virtue for farmers is the fact that it can thrive with so little water. -
In a new book, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and his son and grandson discuss how to feed a growing planet. "We've been fortunate to make a whole lot more money than anybody can spend intelligently on themselves, so the object is to spend it intelligently on the rest of the world," says the senior Buffett. -
Water from the Ogallala Aquifer is withdrawn about six times faster than rain or rivers can recharge it. Now, a group of farmers in one part of northwestern Kansas has agreed to pump 20 percent less water out of the aquifer over the next five years. -
A lot of the grass-fed beef sold in the U.S. now comes from Australia because it's cheaper and available year-round. But U.S. producers say they still have an advantage over the imported meat: a homegrown story. -
One of the really big challenges facing our world is how to grow more food without using up the globe's land and water. One company in Ohio says we've been ignoring one solution: insects. It's using larvae of the black soldier fly to convert waste into feed for fish or pigs. -
Tufts University says that one of its researchers violated ethics rules while carrying out a study of genetically modified "golden rice" in China. The study showed that the rice can fight malnutrition, but researchers didn't provide enough information to the parents of the children who ate it, Tufts says. -
Farmers say they need to produce food as efficiently as possible in order to feed the world. It's high-tech agriculture's claim to the moral high ground in the debate over how best to grow food. But is it true? -
The agency said that the most problematic resistant bacteria are emerging in hospitals. But it also called bacteria that have become resistant to drugs used on the farm a "serious threat."
