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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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is buying billions worth of food to give it to food banks. But food banks say that SNAP, also known as food stamps, is a better way to get food to people in need.
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A loudspeaker-equipped van is circling the streets of Immokalee, Fla., and broadcasting warnings about COVID-19 to prevent the coronavirus from spreading among farmworkers.
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NPR science and business correspondents talk about the protection of the workers — those working now, and those who will start soon, in a variety of industries.
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An NPR science correspondent takes listener questions about why some shelves in the grocery stores are empty and how the food supply is affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
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An NPR science correspondent takes listener questions about why some shelves in the grocery stores are empty and how the food supply is affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
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NewsTyson Foods is halting work at a processing site in Waterloo, Iowa, because people have tested positive for the virus. Other plants also have closed, cutting U.S. pork production by about a quarter.
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NewsSmithfield 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. -
NewsSeveral 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. -
NewsLab 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. -
NewsThe 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.
