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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Distant Cousins Of Food Crops Deserve Respect And ProtectionScientists 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. -
Vilsack served as secretary of agriculture during the Obama administration and has been a trusted adviser to President-elect Joe Biden. But critics say his time has passed. -
Several big farm groups, traditionally hostile to environmental regulations, are now working with environmental advocates in support of farmer-friendly actions to reduce carbon emissions. -
Farmworkers Say The Government Is Trying To Cut Their WagesFarmworker advocates are accusing the U.S. Department of Agriculture of trying to cut the wages of farmworkers who come to the U.S. on temporary guest worker visas. -
Some of the first GMOs – corn and cotton plants that have been genetically modified to fend off insects – are running into problems. Bugs have become resistant to them because they've been overused. -
Large-scale solar farms are running into opposition from people who want to save farmland. Now solar companies are trying to combine solar and farming. -
The pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity in the U.S. And while the government has programs to assist struggling Americans in accessing food, it's not always enough.
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A state official in Arkansas who's led a national effort to limit damage from a controversial herbicide has recently found his tractors damaged and hay bales burned. -
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. -
Rattan Lal, an Indian-born scientist, has devoted his career to finding ways to capture carbon from the air and store it in soil. Today, that idea has a catchy name: regenerative agriculture.
