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 fungus that has destroyed banana plantations in Asia is now in Latin America. The disease moves slowly, but there's no cure, and it could mean calamity for the continent's banana industry. -
The number of pigs in China is falling rapidly due to an epidemic of African Swine Fever. It's affecting farmers and consumers across the world, because China produces half of the world's pork. -
Some of the oldest companies in America are in the climate change debate. Utilities are supposed to deliver electricity cheaply and reliably. Now, regulators are trying to make them go green.
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Humans must drastically alter food production in order to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming, according to a U.N. report.
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Studies are revealing new, unintended threats that neonicotinoid pesticides pose to insects. The chemicals, widely used by farmers, are difficult to control because they persist in the environment. -
Dozens of food companies have promised to stop their suppliers from clearing forests in order to grow crops or graze cattle. Now the companies have a tool to monitor those farmers from space. -
The Trump administration has released details of a $16 billion plan to compensate farmers who've lost money as a result of the trade dispute with China. Some economists say it's too generous. -
That's good for farmers but bad for taxpayers, who subsidize government-backed crop insurance. The fate of research that forecasts these costs is in doubt as economists and scientists leave the USDA. -
Scientists at four leading universities have seen their soybean experiments injured by a stealthy vandal: drifting fumes from a weedkiller called dicamba, now popular among farmers. -
According to a new study of cocoa-producing cooperatives, Fair Trade certification boosts the income of small farmers, but those benefits aren't shared with their hired workers.
