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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Researchers have used radio transmissions to track the movement of fishing vessels and create stunning maps of fishing activity. The maps show that fishing covers most of the globe's oceans. -
In Arkansas, a regulatory committee of farmers and small-business owners banned the latest weed-killing technology from the giant agrichemical company. Monsanto is taking them to court. -
The proposed changes to food stamps, now called SNAP, would be drastic: About half the benefits would be boxed-up, nonperishable foods. Recipients would lose a lot of their ability to pick their food. -
Maybe honeybees get too much attention. They are agricultural animals, like sheep or cattle, and they sometimes make life harder for wild bees. In fact, the bees in true peril are the wild ones. -
Microorganisms play a vital role in growing food and sustaining the planet, but they do it anonymously. Scientists haven't identified most soil microbes, but they are learning which are most common. -
The law that requires America to turn some of its soybeans into diesel fuel for trucks has created a new industry. But it's costing American consumers about $5 billion each year. -
The insecticide chlorpyrifos, already under attack for its risk to small children, may be killing salmon as well. The National Marine Fisheries Service is recommending restrictions on its use. -
Eight large companies have left the Grocery Manufacturers Association, weakening the influential lobbying group. Some companies have dropped out in an effort to shed the industry's "junk food" image. -
Venison, a luxury meat sold in high-end stores also shows up on the winter menus of expensive restaurants. But venison from deer killed by hunters can't be sold, so much of it is given away for free. -
During the New Deal, the government set up hundreds of public canneries in small towns. Most have disappeared, but a surviving cannery in Farmville, Va., is getting a boost from local farmers.
