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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The state's summertime ban on the use of a popular weedkiller has dissolved, for now, as a result of court decisions. Some confused farmers are rethinking their plans for this year's crops. -
Republicans in Congress have released their version of a new Farm Bill. It imposes new requirements on low-income recipients of food assistance, but continues traditional subsidies for farmers. -
On a growing number of dairy farms, cows, not people, decide when they need to be milked. Robots can do the job day or night. For some farm families, the robots free them from rigid milking schedules. -
The Department of Agriculture says organic-food makers can keep using carrageenan, a thickener made from seaweed. It's the second time this year that it has reversed an organic board's recommendation. -
Strawberry growers are so worried about the farmworker shortage that they're testing a strawberry-picking robot. But while picking strawberries is easy for humans, machines struggle with the task. -
The fast-food chain is about to roll out a new kind of burger, made from a mixture of beef and mushrooms. Sonic calls it "uniquely delicious." Environmentalists say it could help save the planet. -
The Food and Drug Administration has started testing randomly selected fresh herbs and prepared guacamole. So far, the agency has found dangerous bacteria in 3 to 6 percent of the samples it tested. -
Researchers have used radio transmissions to track the movement of fishing vessels and create stunning maps of fishing activity. The maps show that fishing covers most of the globe's oceans. -
In Arkansas, a regulatory committee of farmers and small-business owners banned the latest weed-killing technology from the giant agrichemical company. Monsanto is taking them to court. -
The proposed changes to food stamps, now called SNAP, would be drastic: About half the benefits would be boxed-up, nonperishable foods. Recipients would lose a lot of their ability to pick their food.
