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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Chicken bones unearthed in Israel may mark a turning point in human cuisine: They could be the earliest evidence of people raising chickens for food, rather than cockfighting or use in ceremonies. -
A White House photographer captured the lunch that Richard Nixon ate before announcing his resignation. It's an unusual image of a humble meal as power is slipping away. -
Cottage cheese was the yogurt of the mid-20th century: a dairy product for the health-conscious. But it has fallen out of favor, while marketing of — and demand for — yogurt has soared. -
Making yogurt requires bacteria — but which strains of bacteria? There are dozens to choose from, and that choice affects yogurt's tartness and texture. -
Edgar Diaz poured his heart into building a yogurt company whose product won accolades. So why did he burn down his factory? The answer is a kind of love story: an ill-fated love affair with yogurt. -
Wild bees are some of nature's busiest pollinators of crops and flowers. But new evidence suggests a warming climate is squeezing the bounds of where bumblebees can live. -
The White House has ordered a review of the government's system for regulating products of biotechnology, including genetically modified crops. That system has been controversial from the start. -
Organic farmers say they need crop varieties that were bred specifically for conditions on their farms. Clif Bar & Company decided to back their cause with up to $10 million in grants. -
Will agricultural chemical dealers start selling microbes? Some big pesticide companies are investing in efforts to turn soil bacteria into tools that farmers can use to grow more food. -
Some organic farmers are protesting a new system Whole Foods is using to rate its suppliers. They say the system devalues the organic label because nonorganic producers can earn the highest grades.
