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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Whole Foods has been forced to stop selling goat cheese made from milk that came from a prison farm, where inmates work for less than a dollar an hour. Yet the inmates themselves aren't complaining. -
There's a global shortage of vanilla beans because big food companies now want natural vanilla, rather than the synthetic kind. Prices have soared, squeezing bakers and ice cream makers alike. -
The Trump administration wants to cut both food aid to the poor and subsidies for the nation's farmers. Supporters of both programs are joining forces to fight the cuts in Congress. -
This spring, orchards in Washington state are being ripped up to make room for a new apple variety called Cosmic Crisp. This is what happens before it hits store shelves. -
President Trump recently accused Canada of unfairly blocking imports of milk from the U.S. He was taking aim at a Canadian system that defiantly rejects the free market and protects small farmers. -
The EPA is not going ahead with a proposed ban on a pesticide called chlorpyrifos, saying there's still scientific uncertainty over its safety. Environmental groups say it can harm young children.
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Immigration lawyers are getting a wave of calls from farmers looking for foreign "guest workers." The farmers are worried that they'll lose their existing workers to an immigration crackdown. -
Trade in food between the U.S. and Mexico has exploded over the past 15 years. President Trump is talking about restricting that trade, but when it comes to food, such moves could backfire. -
David Fisher's farm is a kind of American Dream. Not the conventional one of upward economic mobility. This is the utopian version, the uncompromising pursuit of a difficult agrarian ideal. -
Pesticides called "neonics" are popular among farmers, but also have been blamed for killing bees. In Canada, the province of Ontario is trying to crack down on neonics, with mixed results.
