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 yogurt entrepreneur who set fire to his factory remains in prison, but he's in better spirits now. "He's dreaming again," says his wife. -
A public health campaign to sell Africans on the virtues of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes — bred for higher Vitamin A levels — has helped combat malnutrition on the continent. -
Perdue Farms, one of the largest poultry companies in the country, says it will change its slaughter methods and also some of its poultry houses. Animal welfare groups are cheering. -
Canada, despite its cold weather, ships more fresh tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers to the U.S. than we send the other way. How? With the continent's largest cluster of greenhouses. -
Supermarket tomatoes have a terrible reputation. But the industry is evolving. More than half of supermarket tomatoes now are grown in greenhouses or "shade houses," and flavor is improving. -
Companies cultivating a healthful image often list "evaporated cane juice" in their products' ingredients. But the FDA says it's really just sugar, and that's what food labels should call it. -
The Food and Drug Administration has brushed aside industry objections and will require food labels to disclose how much sugar has been added to packaged food. -
The German-based company Bayer wants to buy Monsanto. It would be the latest in a wave of consolidation among companies that sell seeds and pesticides to farmers. -
A new report from the National Academy of Sciences knocked down some pro-GMO claims, such as that they've boosted crop yields, and urged federal agencies to change the way these foods are regulated. -
As companies shun genetically modified ingredients, they're buying more sugar extracted from sugar cane rather than beets. Sugar beet farmers are thinking of going back to conventional beets.
