Charles Benbrook

Charles Benbrook is a research professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University and the program leader of Measure to Manage: Farm and Food Diagnostics for Sustainability and Health. His career has focused on developing science-based systems for evaluating the public health, environmental, and economic impacts of changes in agricultural systems, technology, and policy. He spent the first 18 years of his career working in Washington, D.C., first for the Executive Office of the President, then as the staff director for a U.S. House of Representatives agricultural subcommittee. He was the Executive Director of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Agriculture and has run a small consulting firm since 1991. He moved to the West in 1997 and served as the chief scientist for The Organic Center from 2004–2012. Benbrook has served as an appointed member on the USDA’s AC 21 agricultural biotechnology advisory committee since 2011. His 2012 peer-reviewed study documenting the big increase in herbicide use triggered by the planting of genetically engineered crops in the U.S. has been downloaded over 110,000 times.