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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After an outbreak of E. coli in spinach killed several people in 2006, farmers clamped down on every possible source of contamination. Those safety efforts have also pushed out wildlife, destroyed sensitive habitats and increased pollution in waterways. -
The first big fields of stevia ever grown in the U.S. will spout this summer in California's Central Valley. One company is trying to turn this semiwild, zero-calorie plant into an industrial crop at Silicon Valley speed. -
Prices for American farmland have doubled in the past few years. Does that make it a bubble? Or is there a good reason for the rise in prices? -
In a village near Beijing, Little Donkey Farm is trying to rebuild a tradition of organic farming in the world's most populous country. It builds on thousands of years of Chinese history, but it's also inspired by American experiences. -
Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov shared the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for "groundbreaking experiments" with a new material expected to play a large role in electronics.
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FDA scientists studying the chemical composition of meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats say they're as safe as that of their noncloned counterparts. The FDA findings, similar to an EU report issued last week, do not address the ethics of cloning.
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Some of the most advanced climate models show global warming hurting agricultural production in the world's poorest regions. But Cynthia Rosenzweig, a NASA scientist who's studied this question for 20 years, has faith that solutions are within reach.
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German researcher Gerhard Ertl has won the 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Ertl developed new methods for studying the "surface chemistry" that is critical to everything from catalytic converters for cleaning up auto exhaust, to the chemical reactions that created the hole in the ozone layer.
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Imagine standing on a corner and instantly getting the median income of the neighborhood or the crime rate on your street -- all by using your cell phone. Cell phone companies are starting to tap into GPS technology and software companies are already imagining how to use it.
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If the budget allows, the Census Bureau will be out with GPS devices in 2009 to pinpoint every American dwelling. The collected data is confidential, but some private companies might challenge that law.
