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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For years, powerful farmers in California's Central Valley fought for more water from the state's rivers. Now some are changing course, because there's no more water to be found. -
Reformist farmers in California have deposed the leader of the country's biggest irrigation district, who was known for fighting water regulations. Farmers are accepting less water means less farming.
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A promising, less labor-intensive perennial rice is beginning to take off in China, but whether this success can be replicated in other crops like wheat or corn remains to be seen.
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San Diego has an ambitious plan to store renewable energy, using extra solar power to pump water up a mountain. This old-style "water battery" technology could be set for a revival.
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A single irrigation district in California, along the Mexican border, takes more water from the Colorado River than all of Arizona and Nevada. It's under pressure to use less.
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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.
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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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President Biden's lofty domestic goals were brought down to earth by congressional opposition, notably from one Democratic senator. International efforts to fight planetary warming also fell short.
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Despite a year of increasing weather disasters, Biden's ambitious climate plans may be doomed in Congress.
