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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Trade in food between the U.S. and Mexico has exploded over the past 15 years. President Trump is talking about restricting that trade, but when it comes to food, such moves could backfire. -
Those "expiration" labels on packaged food may confuse consumers and dupe them into throwing good food in the trash. Two major food industry associations want to change that and are proposing reforms. -
What's the single most important thing that the world's farmers could do to reduce global warming? Give cattle — especially in the tropics — faster-growing, more nutritious pasture. -
For one of the biggest and most successful dairymen in America, success was based in part on crossing cultural boundaries. Now, he has returned home to continue building his empire of milk. -
Farmers are shy; chefs are ferocious. But they need each other to put local food on restaurant tables. A "speed-dating" event in Washington, D.C. matches farmers with chefs, aided by free beer. -
Perdue is popular with farmer groups and establishment Republicans. If he is confirmed, he will be in charge of food aid to the poor and other programs that some members of Congress want to cut. -
After years of drought, California is getting drenched with rains. Some scientists and farmers are testing a way to capture that water by filling the state's depleted groundwater aquifers. -
Farmers have to follow organic rules for three years before they can sell their food as certified organic. That transition period can mean much lower profits. But a new certification may change that. -
David Fisher's farm is a kind of American Dream. Not the conventional one of upward economic mobility. This is the utopian version, the uncompromising pursuit of a difficult agrarian ideal. -
President-elect Donald Trump hasn't said much about food and farm policy or named his choices for top food-related jobs. But the coming years will likely see profound battles over food and nutrition. -
Many meat producers say they are reducing their use of antibiotics. Yet the latest government statistics show that sales of these drugs for farm use continue to grow. -
Some members of Congress are calling on the government to crack down on food labels like soy milk or hemp milk. They say the "milk" label is legally reserved for only one beverage source: cows.
