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.
-
The Environmental Protection Agency says that the country's most widely used weedkiller, glyphosate, probably does not cause cancer. The chemical has been under intense international scrutiny. -
The world's largest seed company, Monsanto, is being bought by Germany-based chemical company, Bayer. Farmers at a farm show in Canada are wondering if this will reduce competition.
-
Bayer, the maker of Aspirin and other pharmaceuticals and chemicals, is buying Monsanto in a deal valued at $66 billion. If approved, it would make one of the world's biggest agri-chemical companies.
-
Coffee can teach us many things, including engineering. At the University of California, Davis, it's now the focus of the most popular elective class on campus and of an ambitious new research center. -
There's new and detailed data on the impact of genetically modified crops on pesticide use. Those crops replaced insecticides, and, at first, some herbicides. But herbicide use has rebounded. -
Minnesota's governor has ordered new restrictions on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been blamed for killing bees. Many details of the plan, however, remain to be worked out. -
To help dairy farmers hurt by a glut, the USDA said this week it'll buy $20 million worth of cheese and give it to food banks. But we eat so much of the stuff, that's hardly a drop in the bucket. -
According to a new study, the nation's first soda tax succeeded in cutting consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. But there's uncertainty about whether the effect will be permanent. -
Milk is like oil - it's refined into products that are traded globally. So global events can mean profits or losses for dairy farmers. This year, they're seeing losses, and asking Congress for help. -
Sales of food labeled "non-GMO" are booming, and it's starting to annoy organic food companies. They see the non-GMO label as cut-rate competition that doesn't deliver what shoppers imagine. -
A new type of genetically engineered crop is tempting farmers to use a weedkiller illegally. The illicit chemical use has damaged nearby crops and provoked conflict among neighbors. -
Most people know not to eat raw cookie dough. But now it's serious: 46 people have now been sickened with E. coli-tainted flour. Here's how contamination might be occurring.
