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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Some Americans, fearing food shortages from COVID-19, have cleaned out supermarket shelves. Yet there's too much food in some places. Farmers are dumping milk and vegetables that they can't sell.
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Instead of reopening health care exchanges for those who don't qualify for Medicaid and don't have employer-based insurance, Trump is proposing paying hospitals directly. But it might not be enough.
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Computer models predict that between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 in the months ahead. Administration officials said public health interventions could still lower the toll.
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Farmworkers are still working during the coronavirus epidemic. They're essential. But they're also at greater risk of infection.
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Grass on the prairie is growing taller because there's now more carbon dioxide in the air. Paradoxically, though, this might be hurting wildlife, because the grass is less nutritious.
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In the search for alternatives to coal and gas, some European countries have turned to a very old fuel. They're importing wood from the United States. Some environmentalists say it makes no sense.
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Under new federal rules, pork companies can hire workers to do some tasks currently reserved for federal inspectors in hog slaughterhouses. Critics say it's a move toward privatization.
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Grocery stores are full of food with labels like organic, cage-free or fair trade that appeal to a consumer's ideals. But there's often a gap between what they seem to promise and what they deliver.
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The world's most widely used weed killer was once seen as one of the safest pesticides. Now it is blamed for causing cancer. Yet the scientific evidence remains disputed.
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Most beef cattle receive antibiotics in their feed to prevent liver abscesses while eating a high-energy diet. There's growing pressure on feedlots to stop this — and some have. But it's costly.