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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California's farmers, the country's biggest producers of fruits and vegetables, are facing a major shakeup. A new law limits their access to water from the state's depleted aquifers. -
Farmers in California's drought-plagued Central Valley have big plans for the next year of heavy rains. They want to use that water to replenish depleted aquifers, akin to depositing water in a bank.
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Scientists who warned of heat waves and rising seas this week also say that it's possible to avoid the worst effects of the warming climate. They're relying on computer models of the world economy.
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California's farmers are pumping vast amounts of water from underground aquifers this year to make up for water they can't get from rivers. It's unsustainable, and the state is moving to stop it.
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A huge organic farm that's backed by General Mills is facing accusations that it's doing more environmental harm than good. The project shows the difficulties of delivering on green promises.
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Environmental watchdogs now can detect deforestation even when it's hidden from sight by rain and clouds. They're using data from radar on a European satellite.
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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.
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Smithfield Foods didn't want to stop slaughtering hogs at its Sioux Falls pork plant, even after hundreds of workers got sick with the coronavirus. Then the city's mayor forced the company's hand.
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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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Several processing plants in the U.S. are sitting idle this week because workers are sick with the coronavirus. Other facilities are still operating, but fewer workers are showing up.
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Lab studies have shown hydroxychloroquine has blocked the coronavirus from entering cells, but scientists have not reported results yet of whether it can work as a treatment.
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The Trump administration decided against opening special window for Affordable Care Act sign ups. "It's like they're twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid anything" Obamacare, said one.
