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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Many alternative food brands have been swallowed by big food companies. Recently, Perdue bought Niman Ranch, which sells "natural" meat. But after a sale, will shoppers feel the product is the same? -
Australia suffered through a truly epic drought, and it survived. But some of Australia's solutions — like a free market for water — may be too radical for the Golden State.
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In the past 10 years, the global blueberry crop has tripled. Yet the big, round commercial blueberry is a fairly recent innovation. It was created by breeders exactly 100 years ago, in New Jersey. -
Cottage cheese was the yogurt of the mid-20th century: a dairy product for the health-conscious. But it has fallen out of favor, while marketing of — and demand for — yogurt has soared. -
Government regulators have approved the first genetically modified apples, which don't turn brown when you cut them open. But planting these trees will be a gamble since consumers may not want them. -
Wondering why your local Chipotle is no longer serving pork? It's because a big supplier was housing pigs in confined quarters. But there's debate about whether that's really worse for the animals.
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New GMO potatoes don't bruise as easily, and, when fried, they have less of a potentially harmful chemical. Yet some big chip and french fry makers won't touch them because of the stigma of GMOs. -
Fertilizer runoff has provoked a confrontation between Des Moines and the farms that surround it. The city's water utility wants to sue neighboring counties for nitrates in the Raccoon River. -
Coca-Cola got a lot of attention in November when it announced it was going into the milk business. In fact, its extra-nutritious milk product was invented by some dairy farmers in Indiana. -
One man's quest for the perfect loaf took him to Paris, Berlin, California and Kansas. What he learned can't easily be captured in words. It's a feeling in your fingers that comes from experience.
