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 Trump administration wants to cut both food aid to the poor and subsidies for the nation's farmers. Supporters of both programs are joining forces to fight the cuts in Congress. -
Government statistics show a big increase in the number of foreign guest workers approved to work on American farms this year. It's up 36 percent over the same period last year. -
Amid the wreckage of economic crisis in Puerto Rico, a local food movement is taking root. Hopeful farmers are leasing long-abandoned land. But why was the land abandoned in the first place? -
This spring, orchards in Washington state are being ripped up to make room for a new apple variety called Cosmic Crisp. This is what happens before it hits store shelves. -
A new apple variety is on its way. It's called Cosmic Crisp, and farmers in Washington state are planting these trees by the millions. They're making a risky bet that consumers will like it. -
President Trump recently accused Canada of unfairly blocking imports of milk from the U.S. He was taking aim at a Canadian system that defiantly rejects the free market and protects small farmers. -
New EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has decided not to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide widely used on produce. That's despite evidence previously compiled by EPA showing it could pose risks to consumers. -
New satellite images reveal that few Midwestern farmers are planting pollution-preventing "cover crops." In Maryland, though, farmers are doing it, thanks to hefty subsidies. -
Internal emails show Monsanto executives scrambling to counter a U.N. agency's finding that glyphosate, the chemical in Roundup, can cause cancer. One email proposed "ghost-writing" scientific papers. -
Many of America's farmers are successfully fending off environmental regulation, from the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule to a lawsuit in Iowa that's aimed at reducing nitrates in rivers.
