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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Zurich, Switzerland, is shutting down the gas supply to some neighborhoods. Originally aimed at fighting climate change and saving money, it's also a step to cut gas imports from Russia. -
Big dairy farms are profiting from California's tougher limits on greenhouse emissions. They're getting paid to capture methane from cow manure. But critics say the system subsidizes polluters.
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A satellite has detected massive leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from natural gas plants and pipelines. Most of these releases are deliberate, resulting from sloppy pipeline repairs.
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The draft, circulated at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, calls for an end to coal power and more rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
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Big oil companies are converting refineries to make "renewable diesel" from soybean oil or beef tallow. It's driven by policies intended to help the climate, but there's a big environmental risk.
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California wants to limit the water that farmers can pump from depleted aquifers. To enforce those limits, regulators are turning to remote sensing satellites.
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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.
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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.
