Dan Charles

Wondering why your local Chipotle is no longer serving pork? It's because a big supplier was housing pigs in confined quarters. But there's debate about whether that's really worse for the animals.

New GMO potatoes don't bruise as easily, and, when fried, they have less of a potentially harmful chemical. Yet some big chip and french fry makers won't touch them because of the stigma of GMOs.

Fertilizer runoff has provoked a confrontation between Des Moines and the farms that surround it. The city's water utility wants to sue neighboring counties for nitrates in the Raccoon River.

On Jan. 1, all eggs sold in California will have to come from chickens living in more spacious digs. The rules have disrupted the egg industry and pushed prices up at grocery stores in California.

Coca-Cola got a lot of attention in November when it announced it was going into the milk business. In fact, its extra-nutritious milk product was invented by some dairy farmers in Indiana.

Should dietary guidelines consider the environmental effects of our food choices? The government-appointed Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee thinks they should. Congress, however, says no.

If you look at it one way, these are the best of times for organic egg and milk producers. They can barely keep up with demand. Prices for their products are high. Profits are rolling in. Operations are expanding.

But that expansion is provoking suspicion, name-calling, and even clandestine investigations ...

So-called "ancient grains" have moved with breathtaking momentum from America's culinary dissident fringe toward the mainstream — and now they've arrived. After all, what's more mainstream than Cheerios? In January, General Mills will introduce a new version of its flagship breakfast cereal, called Cheerios + Ancient Grains.

The new version ...

Remember when Cheerios and Grape-Nuts went GMO-free? That was about a year ago, when their corporate creators announced that these products would no longer contain ingredients made from genetically modified organisms like common types of corn, soybeans or sugar beets.

When they actually arrived on supermarket shelves, though, there ...

Biotech companies are inserting new genes into microorganisms, turning them into tiny factories to produce valuable nutrients and flavors. But many of the companies don't want to talk about it.

You can lead children to vegetables, but can you make them eat? In one school lunch program, kids will tell you upfront what they think of your veggies — and what you should do with them.

Turkey is a land of fine honey. Bees produce more of the sweet stuff in Turkey than in any other country except China. And Turkish consumers happily eat most of it themselves. Very little Turkish honey is exported. When it is, it usually commands premium prices.

But some American honey ...

The flavor of the season, you may have noticed, is pumpkin spice. Food companies have gone overboard on the stuff. There are pumpkin spice ice cream sandwiches, pumpkin spice-flavored almonds and, of course, pumpkin spice lattes.

Comedian John Oliver couldn't take it anymore.

"I personally would prefer to drink a ...

Some of the biggest names in American agriculture, ranging from farmers' organizations to private companies like Monsanto and DuPont, have agreed on principles governing the use of data collected from farms.

That data increasingly drives farm operations. Tractors and combines carry sensors that record — and upload to the ...

The federal government is putting $100 million behind a simple idea: doubling the value of federal food benefits when people use them to buy fresh produce. This idea started small but became a hit.

New brands are reshaping the apple aisle of supermarkets. Many are "club apples" --varieties that are controlled and managed by select groups of farmers.

In an open field on the northern edge of Berkeley, Calif., planting vegetables is the latest form of political insurrection.

On the morning of April 22, 2012, hundreds of people broke the lock on a fence surrounding the Gill Tract, a 14-acre plot of land owned by the University of ...

If you cover food and farming, as we do, you end up looking at farm magazines and agricultural web sites. This means you see lots of articles about corn prices and ads for farm equipment.

Then, a couple of years ago, Modern Farmer appeared. It's a farm magazine like ...

One man's quest for the perfect loaf took him to Paris, Berlin, California and Kansas. What he learned can't easily be captured in words. It's a feeling in your fingers that comes from experience.

Government regulators have approved a new generation of genetically engineered corn and soybeans. They're the latest weapon in an arms race between farmers and weeds, and the government's green light is provoking angry opposition from environmentalists.

The actual decision, at first glance, seems narrow and technical. The Environmental Protection ...