Dan Charles

Somewhere in Iowa, volunteers are earning $900 apiece by providing blood samples after eating bits of a banana kissed with a curious tinge of orange.

It's the first human trial of a banana that's been genetically engineered to contain higher levels of beta carotene, the nutrient that our body converts ...

Yesterday, we reported on a legal tussle over control of the country's top center of strawberry breeding, at the University of California, Davis. But there's a backstory to that battle. It involves the peculiar nature of the UC Davis strawberry program.

Basically, in the world of plant breeding, there ...

The University of California, Davis is the source of most commercial strawberries. Now, the university's strawberry breeders are going into business for themselves, and farmers are worried.

Some people have had it with "natural" food.

For fifteen years, Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability for Consumer Reports, has been pointing out that "natural" is just about the most misleading label that you'll ever see on a food package. Yet consumers still look for ...

If you're a listener, you may recognize the name New Morning Farm. It's a 95-acre organic vegetable farm in south-central Pennsylvania, and it has appeared in our stories about young farmers, urban farmers markets, new food safety regulations and the popularity of rhubarb.

The voice ...

A tiny fraction of America's 2 million farmers produces most of our food. They are the winners of a long-running competition for land and profits that has also drained the life out of small towns.

A few weeks ago, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spotted an unfamiliar moth in a shipment of organic soybeans. It was a small victory in the effort to prevent the spread of exotic pests.

Water is scarce in California, and prices are all over the map. Some farmers are paying almost 100 times more than others. Should water flow to the highest bidder?

California produces most of America's vegetables and nuts. Yet there's little sign the drought there is creating food shortages in the U.S., because farmers are rationing water and draining aquifers.

A new bill passed by Congress would award Puerto Rico's 65th Infantry Regiment the Congressional Gold Medal, which has been presented to the Navajo Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen and other units.

Coffee prices have spiked this year because of drought in Brazil and a disease that's crippling coffee production in parts of Central America. Coffee traders says prices could rise to $3 a pound.

When crops are surrounded by high levels of carbon dioxide, they're more productive. But they may have lower concentrations of some crucial nutrients, which could increase malnutrition in the future.

There are more than 2 million farmers in this country, but most of them have other jobs that bring in the money, retirement benefits and health insurance that they need.

Chalk up another win for citizen activists. Coke and Pepsi announced this week that they will no longer use brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, in their soft drinks.

BVO is an emulsifier; it helps to keep other ingredients, like flavors and colors, nicely mixed together. But last year, a ...

There's a long list of pesky exceptions to the rules organic farmers have to follow for using pesticides and fertilizers. This week, a battle erupted over those exceptions.

Cian Nugent doesn't know what he wants to be, and that's OK. The Dublin-based guitarist cut his teeth as a 19-year-old pickin' on the acoustic worlds that John Fahey, Jack Rose and Bert Jansch built. But that was five years ago, and since then, Nugent has ...

In eastern Kansas, ranchers burn the prairie every spring to bring back grass for grazing cattle. Environmentalists celebrate those fires because without them the delicate ecosystem would disappear.

It could be another milestone in organic food's evolution from crunchy to commercial: Wal-Mart, the king of mass retailing, is promising to "drive down organic food prices" with a new line of organic food products. The new products will be at least 25 percent cheaper than organic food that's ...

Scientists and food activists are launching a campaign to promote seeds that can be freely shared, rather than protected through patents and licenses. They call it the Open Source Seed Initiative.

The two cases are the first in the country since 1999. The virus spread from neighboring Cameroon. When polio is on the move in Central Africa, the toll can be tragic.