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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Let's imagine that we've ended global warming. Humans no longer are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Here's what life is like in a zero-carbon world. -
William Happer, a Princeton scientist who is doubtful of the dangers of climate change, appears to be leading a White House challenge to the government's conclusion that global warming is a threat.
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Connecticut and California are considering statewide taxes on sugary drinks. New data from soda taxes in Berkeley and Philadelphia present a mixed picture of their effects on sugar consumption. -
Satellite images show the amount of green vegetation on Earth increasing, despite deforestation. But some of the added greenery has a downside. -
Some farmers say they're buying a popular new soybean seed partly because they're afraid of crop damage from herbicide drift. A new lawsuit claims the seed maker is violating antitrust laws. -
The Food and Drug Administration is inspecting less food these days, thanks to the shutdown. And while that has raised questions about food safety, the food business is largely carrying on as usual.
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Scientists have re-engineered photosynthesis, a foundation of life on Earth, creating genetically modified plants that grow faster and bigger. They hope it leads to bigger harvests of food. -
Steven Falk of Lafayette, Calif., has resigned because he says he cannot carry out policies that fail to address the urgent threat of a changing climate. -
The Pentagon wants university researchers to find ways to protect crops in the field using infectious viruses carried by insects. Critics think it looks like bioweapons research. -
The Environmental Protection Agency has given farmers the OK to continue to spray the controversial weedkiller dicamba. The chemical is prone to blowing in the wind and damaging other vegetation.
