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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Economists are working on ways to put a price on the environmental damage of growing food. Take sugar: Half of what we eat comes from beets, half from cane. Each has an impact, in very different ways. -
Federal programs that collect money from farmers in order to promote pork, beef and eggs have been under attack. They now want to exempt their documents from the Freedom of Information Act. -
America's foremost farmer-philosopher, Wendell Berry, is the subject of a new documentary. It celebrates the writer's work, and the rural community in Kentucky in which he's rooted. -
The U.S. is trying to figure out whether, and how, to regulate crops that have had their genes "edited." One example: a mushroom that doesn't brown when cut. It could be the first of many such crops.
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Over the past century, small-town seed businesses have given way to global enterprises. The story of one small seed company in Nebraska helps explain what drove the transformation. -
A modern broiler, or meat chicken, grows incredibly fast. The bird suffers as a result, and some critics say its flavor does too. Now Whole Foods wants its suppliers to shift to slower-growing breeds. -
In the coming weeks, major brands including General Mills, Kellogg and Mars will start labeling foods produced with genetic engineering. That's all because of a Vermont law set to take effect July 1. -
March is a pivotal time in the world of strawberries. Production shifts westward, to California. In Florida, thousands of men and women who pick strawberries are moving on to other work. -
Jonathan Lundgren's research pointed out problems with popular pesticides. He says that message — and the messenger — are unwelcome at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service. -
The pesticide got "conditional" approval eight years ago, but the EPA now says it could poison aquatic life. The move is raising hope among activists who want tighter regulation of pesticides.
