Dan Charles

Unraveling The Mystery Of A Rice Revolution

Dan Charles — Fri, 03 May 2013 20:19:00 +0000

It's a captivating story: A global rice-growing revolution that started with a Jesuit priest in Madagascar, far from any recognized center of agricultural innovation. Every so often, it surfaces in the popular media — most recently in The Guardian, which earlier this year described farmers in one corner of India hauling in gigantic rice harvests without resorting to pesticides or genetic modification.

Their secret?

Who Paid For Last Summer's Drought? You Did

Dan Charles — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:29:00 +0000

Say the words "crop insurance" and most people start to yawn. For years, few nonfarmers knew much about these government-subsidized insurance policies, and even fewer found any fault with them.

Exploring Coffee's Past To Rescue Its Future

Dan Charles — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:57:00 +0000

At the Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Education (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica, you can touch the history of coffee — and also, if the optimists have their way, part of its future.

Here, spread across 25 acres, are coffee trees that take you back to coffee's origins.

"The story starts in Africa, no? East Africa," says Eduardo Somarriba, a researcher at CATIE, as we walk through long rows of small coffee trees.

These trees came directly from forests in Africa.

Coffee For A Cause: What Do Those Feel-Good Labels Deliver?

Dan Charles — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:20:00 +0000

What does it take to find guilt-free coffee?

Much of our coffee comes from places where the environment is endangered and workers earn very little — sometimes, just a few dollars for a whole day's work. Coffee farmers have helped cut down tropical forests, and most of them use pesticides.

It doesn't take much effort, though, to find bags of coffee with labels that promise social and environmental improvements.

How Coffee Brings The World Together

Dan Charles — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:22:00 +0000

Coffee is more than a drink.

Fertilizer Shows Its Deadly Side

Dan Charles — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:06:00 +0000

My first reaction when I heard details of this week's deadly fertilizer explosion in Texas was horror.

My second thought was, "Maybe I shouldn't have pushed to change that headline."

National Geographic magazine just published in its May issue my article about how nitrogen fertilizer has shaped our planet.

As Promised: Obama Wants To Overhaul Global Anti-Hunger Efforts

Dan Charles — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:10:00 +0000

The White House unveiled its proposal Wednesday for drastic changes in government programs that donate food to fight hunger abroad — and surprised no one.

As we reported last week, rumors of such an overhaul had been circulating for weeks, arousing both hope and anger among organizations involved in global anti-hunger programs.

The rumors, it turns out, were largely on target — and the groups that previously had expressed

A Political War Brews Over 'Food For Peace' Aid Program

Dan Charles — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:18:00 +0000

Washington is awash in rumors this week that the White House is planning major changes in the way the U.S. donates food to fight hunger in some of the world's poorest countries.

It has set off an emotional debate. Both sides say they are trying to save lives.

America's policies on food aid are singularly generous — and also unusually selfish. On the generous side, the U.S.

Are Agriculture's Most Popular Insecticides Killing Our Bees?

Dan Charles — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:08:00 +0000

Environmentalists and beekeepers are calling on the government to ban some of the country's most widely used insect-killing chemicals.

The pesticides, called neonicotinoids, became popular among farmers during the 1990s. They're used to coat the seeds of many agricultural crops, including the biggest crop of all: corn.

In A Grain Of Golden Rice, A World Of Controversy Over GMO Foods

Dan Charles — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 07:59:00 +0000

There's a kind of rice growing in some test plots in the Philippines that's unlike any rice ever seen before. It's yellow.