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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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. -
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.
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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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COVID-19 has turned one end of the food industry — stores and restaurants — on its head. At the other end, food production hums along as usual, but that could change if workers catch the virus.
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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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The Internet startup Tillable wants to match farmers with farmland available for rent. The problem? Farmers already on that land fear their farm data is being used against them.
