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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A huge organic farm that's backed by General Mills is facing accusations that it's doing more environmental harm than good. The project shows the difficulties of delivering on green promises. -
Environmental watchdogs now can detect deforestation even when it's hidden from sight by rain and clouds. They're using data from radar on a European satellite. -
Scientists are calling for efforts to protect hundreds of wild plants in the United States that are related to native foods such as cranberries and chili peppers. -
Some of the first GMOs 鈥� corn and cotton plants that have been genetically modified to fend off insects 鈥� are running into problems. Bugs have become resistant to them because they've been overused. -
The Trump administration has been buying food from farmers and getting it to food banks. Food banks, however, say the program was not set up to deliver food efficiently. -
For more than a century, food has been getting more abundant, and cheaper. Yet people keep worrying about food shortages. Some economists say the fears actually create their own problems. -
Smithfield Foods didn't want to stop slaughtering hogs at its Sioux Falls pork plant, even after hundreds of workers got sick with the coronavirus. Then the city's mayor forced the company's hand. -
Some Americans, fearing food shortages from COVID-19, have cleaned out supermarket shelves. Yet there's too much food in some places. Farmers are dumping milk and vegetables that they can't sell. -
Several processing plants in the U.S. are sitting idle this week because workers are sick with the coronavirus. Other facilities are still operating, but fewer workers are showing up. -
Lab studies have shown hydroxychloroquine has blocked the coronavirus from entering cells, but scientists have not reported results yet of whether it can work as a treatment. -
The Trump administration decided against opening special window for Affordable Care Act sign ups. "It's like they're twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid anything" Obamacare, said one. -
Instead of reopening health care exchanges for those who don't qualify for Medicaid and don't have employer-based insurance, Trump is proposing paying hospitals directly. But it might not be enough.
