Podcast: What is Vertical Farming?

Clinton Monchuk: (00:07)
From Canadian Food Focus, this is Ask a Farmer. I’m your host Clinton Monchuk, a Saskatchewan farmer. In this podcast, we talk to food experts to answer your questions about your food.

Clinton Monchuk: (00:27)
Welcome to the podcast, everybody. Today we’re going to be talking about vertical farming. So, as a farmer, some of the biggest risks that I deal with every year are related to the weather. We have so much uncertainty when it comes to rain and heat and frost, wind… Heck, we even have tornadoes that rip through our place. So there’s a lot of disasters that can happen as a result of the weather, and this ends up causing a lot of sleepless nights for us as farmers and ranchers trying to make sure that we can grow the food that we provide to Canadians and people throughout the world. Now, what if we could take the biggest risk of farming out of the equation? Vertical farming has been developed throughout Canada as a way to reduce some of these food risks and provide localized food options for certain food products. Today we have Alida Burke with us from Growcer, which is a Canadian startup modular vertical farming company, and she’s going to explain a little bit more about how vertical farming fits into our food system. How are you doing today, Alida?

Alida Burke: (01:31)
Not too bad. I’m excited to be here.

Clinton Monchuk: (01:33)
It’s great to have you on. Maybe explain some of your background and how you got to where you are today.

Alida Burke: (01:40)
My name is Alida Burke. I’m the co-founder and CFO here at Growcer. Born and raised in the Ottawa area. And ultimately where Growcer got its start, my business partner and I were studying at the University of Ottawa, specifically in business and in social enterprise. So looking at how you can intersect business, environment and social considerations into building a business. And so while we were at the University of Ottawa, we were fortunate enough to go up to Northern Canada for the first time and have that very common sticker shock experience where food prices are quite high and it spurred us to want to do something about it. So that was about eight or nine years ago now. Wow. And from there, we’ve kind of just been building Growcer ever since, and supporting farmers and new farmers across Canada to be able to grow food locally in their communities.

Clinton Monchuk: (02:35)
Vertical farming, it’s a little different. It’s pretty new. Do you want to just walk us through what vertical farming is and, you know, just some of the things around that and even maybe some of the differences between, say what a vertical farm is and what a modular farm is.

Alida Burke: (02:50)
Yes, for sure. It’s definitely a great question, and one we get a lot. Vertical farming is almost an all encompassing term to talk about indoor growing in a controlled environment setting. And the ‘vertical’ usually references vertical stacks, let’s say. You can see this in a warehouse farm, usually in larger cities in Canada, or in what we do here at Growcer, which we use the term modular farming, but that’s mostly in the sense that our containers are modular, so you kind of inter[connect] and plug them in and can move them and things like that. But in its core, it’s still vertical farming. Now you also will use terms like hydroponic farming or aeroponics. And so with vertical farming, you can use those different types of methods, which is more so how you farm. So hydroponics, you’re growing food without soil, and it’s typically using water as its main medium to grow the plants. Aeroponics, it’s slightly different in that it’s usually suspended in air and it’s kind of water pellets going to the plants; it’s a bit of a different approach. But then you can also use hydroponic farming, you’ll see typically in greenhouses as well, where that doesn’t encompass vertical farming. So ‘vertical’ usually is indoors, controlled and in those typical stacks.

Clinton Monchuk: (04:11)
Do you want to just walk through, like, what are some of those foods that would actually be supplied through these vertical farms in an effort to feed people in downtown Calgary or downtown wherever?

Alida Burke: (04:22)
Yeah. It’s a great question because that’s how we also got introduced to this concept of hydroponic vertical farming. You know, we weren’t farmers ourselves originally. We were more interested in the social and the business aspect pertaining to growing. And so at its core, why it was interesting to us was in this Canadian landscape, you can’t grow year-round in many places across Canada. And so hydroponics can be used and vertical farming can be used to grow a variety of different types of crops. But typically what you’ll see are leafy greens as the staple crop. And usually that is because it is a quick turnover crop, so you can grow it much more quickly in a vertical or hydroponic farming method than you could in that traditional soil-based method. So you’re looking at usually from seed to harvest, about six weeks or so. And other types of leafy green-adjacent things, so that’s spinach, arugula, and then you go into your herbs as well, your mint, your basil, things of that nature. So you can grow other crops as well. Like, there’s a lot of development being done for strawberries and how you can do that in an economically viable way in a fully indoor setting. But you’ll see the staple crops being lettuce and leafy greens.

Clinton Monchuk: (05:46)
You mentioned, that it really takes away some of that need to especially import some of these products during the wintertime, typically from California, but also say Mexico or Central America, which then, you know, obviously you have that transportation coming in and I think there’s just a heightened level of awareness, right, with some of the transportation that takes place with some of our products. But I do have to ask, I actually have spinach every day and I love my strawberries. Is there a difference in the taste of these? Like, is it different when you’re growing this where it’s on artificial light versus natural light? I, I don’t know if it is. Or with the soils or, you know, hydroponics or aero products with something that brand new. I never even heard of that until you mentioned it. So, is there any difference? I assume that you’ve tasted quite a few of these different products, right?

Alida Burke: (06:39)
I mean, for me personally, and I might be slightly biased in this instance, I think hydroponically-grown produce usually there’s definitely a difference in quality, which impacts that taste. You know, like if we call it from a research perspective, there’s no specific difference that we would see in terms of nutrient levels, but you’re definitely touching on things like quality, right? You are able to harvest it much closer to when it would actually end up on store shelves or on your plate at home. And then you’re also growing typically a different variety of lettuce or other types of leafy green, things that you wouldn’t typically see coming from California. So typically that is that romaine hearts and things like that, that you would see at the grocery store. Whereas different types of things that a lot of our farmers grow are, let’s say butter crunch lettuces. At its core there, I think it’s just an interesting taste because it’s not typically what you would see at the grocery store.

Clinton Monchuk: (07:39)
Yeah. I’ve never actually heard… You said butter lettuce?

Alida Burke: (07:42)
Yeah, butter crunch.

Clinton Monchuk: (07:44)
You’ve got to tell me what’s butter crunch lettuce? Because I want to find this . It sounds good.

Alida Burke: (07:50)
If you look at it and it’s in your hand, let’s say it kind of almost looks like a flower. It has a softer [texture], and that’s why it’s referenced as butter head or butter crunch, let’s call it, is because it has almost like a butter-like consistency is what it’s referred to. So it’s, yeah, it’s just a tastier product and it’s one that almost all of our clients are growing because people love to eat it.

Clinton Monchuk: (08:18)
Yeah. It sounds like it would be nutrient dense too, if it’s something like that too. But from your point of view, why is there maybe a stronger push towards this now than there has been in the past? Just interesting to hear your insight on that.

Alida Burke: (08:33)
What we’ve seen here in Canada, there’s a few key reasons. The first has been that year-round availability. We work with a lot of clients that are in remote places in Canada, or, you know, are less accessible. And especially over the last few years with the challenges with supply and getting things to the end consumer has definitely rattled what we would say is the norm and what you can rely upon on a consistent basis. So having something that is local that you can understand and know that there’s a consistent supply and that it’s, you know, meters from, let’s say the grocery store or the end consumer — is a big pull, especially in the wanting to know where your food comes from. And that local food movement has been a massive driver over the last few years to bring it back to that neighborhood level.

Alida Burke: (09:30)
The second one is also transportation costs. I think you touched on this, I believe it’s about 90% of our lettuce is imported and mostly from California and Mexico. And so by the time it reaches store shelves, the quality sometimes is just not quite up to par, or what we would, would like to see. So a lot of our clients are growing steps away from where the client can kind of pick it up and bring it home. So for example, the Muskoka Good Foods Co-op, they’re in the Muskoka region of Ontario, and they have a farm just steps outside of their cooperative store. And so they’ve replaced all of the lettuce that they would typically have on the store shelves for folks coming through town. It’s now grown in their parking lot and they’re able to bring down their price that they can offer because that transportation cost is gone.

Alida Burke: (10:25)
So it’s things like that that we’ve seen consistently being some of those key drivers. In terms of reliability, transportation and quality. A few other considerations that I didn’t touch on would also be yield and water consumption. The first, and one of the important factors with growing indoors, in particular with hydroponic farming is around water consumption. So typically if you’re comparing the output of, let’s say, lettuce in a hydroponic farm compared to growing in soil, you’re using about 90 to 95% less water than you would typically use. So it’s a big factor, especially where water scarcity is an issue. And it’s where you’ll typically see also the proliferation of these types of farms because of water being a major constraint and growing. The other one is yield. So for our farm footprint, you’re looking at the 40 by 10 structure.

Alida Burke: (11:24)
You’re looking at typically about 800 to 900 heads a week. That’s what you can produce depending on your crop variety. Heads of lettuce, let’s call it. If you’re looking at herbs, it’s a little bit different, but let’s call it heads of lettuce. So from seed to harvest, you’re typically looking at about six weeks, which is about 30 to 50% faster than what you would have in soil growing. So it’s one of the key factors is why you see those types of crops more commonly in a hydroponic farm, just because you can produce them really well in that type of environment. And an important factor with hydroponic farming in general is just the efficiency of space in what you’re growing.

Clinton Monchuk: (12:10)
Would it be kind of the same if, I go and I think of our garden on the farm and we have, you know, lettuce and cucumbers and stuff like that, the things that you could go grow in this kind of a situation and for whatever reason, when you have that ability to let it ripen just a little bit more, and I don’t know what the scientific how much more, but when you have the ability to let that ripen a little bit more and then, you know, take a bite of that, you know, lettuce or a cucumber or whatever it is that day, there is a little bit of a different, I don’t know if it’s more your mind than anything, but it does taste different, right? So, for example, that cooperative in Muskoka, like, are they finding that it actually tastes from their perspective better, even though nutritionally, it’s the same?

Alida Burke: (12:56)
That’s something that I receive constantly as that feedback. I know my mom tells me that all the time. She’s like, I don’t want to buy grocery store lettuce, I want lettuce from you. So it’s something about it where it’s the quality, and maybe that’s mom speaking, but I think, I think it’s definitely a big one for the Muskoka store. They harvest on a specific day. I think it’s Wednesday or Thursday, and then by Saturday, it’s all sold. It’s, I think there’s definitely something about the product itself, whether it’s just the varieties that they can grow and inherently maybe it’s the varieties that have a different taste. But consistently, I hear that all the time.

Clinton Monchuk: (13:35)
You have some great videos on YouTube and, and I watched some of them. It’s interesting how you control some of the aspects of, say, pests that I would have to deal with on my farm. Right? So obviously it’s not a controlled environment [on my farm], so you’re going to have bugs, you’re going to have weeds, you’re going to have diseases and stuff like that. But your system, obviously it’s different, right? Because you have a, it’s a modular type of a system. Do you want to explain a little bit how you control that environment to make sure you limit the introduction of different pests, but even at that, like what do you do on that biosecurity side to make sure that things are staying to their optimum condition.

Alida Burke: (14:15)
If you imagine what our type of technology looks like, it’s a 40 foot shipping container-esque style. Now it’s structurally insulated panels, a building 40 by 10. At its core. The best part is it’s an enclosed system, where you know, you don’t have, like you said, an open crop sort of situation. So that is good at keeping bugs out. Now, the key factor is making sure that you don’t bring bugs in, to keep it so that it’s a nice controlled environment for the plants to grow. So the big ones are the physical barriers, so maintaining a positive pressure sort of environment so that when you’re coming in, there’s also an air curtain and some physical controls to make sure as much as possible you can keep good practices. The second piece is a lot of maintenance and cleaning, like the majority of the time you spend in the farm is actually cleaning and making sure it’s as clean as an environment as possible for the plants to grow, then actually harvesting or some of those other tasks that are typically done.

Alida Burke: (15:16)
And then we also, some clients typically might use some of those biological control products as well. Whether that be beneficial predators that will eat the bad things in the farm, let’s say if you’ve got aphids or if you had other sort of issues like that. Those are some of the key factors, but it’s definitely all in the controls so that as much as possible, you don’t bring anything in, but when you do, you can, you know, pest scout and have those key procedures to make sure that you’re maintaining your environment as, as clean as possible so that they don’t proliferate.

Clinton Monchuk: (15:51)
Yeah. Which is great because, and again, because it’s a controlled environment, it’s a little easier to introduce some of those things to take care of other bad things that might have come in. We talked a lot about the, some of the benefits around the vertical farms. Do you want to talk about, you know, how you see some of the technology changing in the future because it’s ever-improving, right? And I see it on our farm too, right? Technology always gets better and better over time, but what do you see as some of those new leaps that are coming forward around vertical farming, going into the future?

Alida Burke: (16:26)
That’s a great question. I think there’s two key avenues that I see coming up again and again. One is in terms of what you can grow in an indoor environment that is meeting where the industry is at in terms of price point and things like that. So a lot of movement is being done in strawberry production, in terms of how you can grow strawberries indoors year-round, especially in a place like Canada where that’s just not possible. And other berries for that matter indoors. Now there’s more technical considerations for growing strawberries because they’re a reproductive plant. And so there’s pollination and other key variables that you don’t need in a lettuce farm, let’s call it. And other types of crops like that. So strawberries, cucumbers, peppers, things like that I think are at the forefront of what can be grown on an ongoing basis.

Alida Burke: (17:22)
And then the second is, yeah, where does automation play in a vertical farm? So for something like ours where the footprint is quite, is relatively small at this point in time, full automation doesn’t make sense. It’s too costly. But in some of these warehouse farms, you see more automation coming through and how can you throw AI or robotics or other kind of factors into the mix to make it so that ultimately, you’re more efficient and can provide a lower-cost product to the end consumer. But I think there’s definitely, at least from our perspective, because we look at a smaller footprint, that is still always a way in terms of something that makes sense for what we do. But definitely, those are the two biggest trends that I see in the vertical farming industry as a whole.

Clinton Monchuk: (18:18)
So this leads us perfectly into the fun farm fact for the podcast today. Did you know that the first ever hands-free vertical farm opened in British Columbia in March of 2023? It uses touchless technology from seeding right through to harvest. And this was taken from Bennett Jones here in 2024 when they did a little bit of a report on that. And it’s interesting because you made the comment that the technology is getting better, but it doesn’t make a lot of economic sense. So this and similar to what we see with a lot of technologies, something comes out, it’s really interesting, but doesn’t necessarily make economic sense until you kind of fine-tune it and maybe some other companies come in and and provide that service. Is that where you think that might be an option later on in the future too for yourselves?

Alida Burke: (19:06)
For sure. With warehouse farms, it makes a lot of sense because you’re just dealing with a sheer amount of volume and square footage where you’re able to kind of have that automation work really, really well. I think for us, we’ll find probably a hybrid approach where you’re finding some ways to automate certain processes in a small environment or you then build up your processing capacity of let’s say multiple farms going into one processing space that then has those pieces in there where you can bring that volume together to make it make sense. So definitely we’ll see that in the future 100% as it evolves and grows for sure.

Clinton Monchuk: (19:46)
Now we want to understand a little bit more about Growcer. And again, I watched the videos. I really feel that this is a truly unique company that you have and it offers a solution to some food insecurity. But I want you to explain exactly how you develop this to all our listeners so they can kind of understand a little bit more about who Growcer is and really what some of that target audience you’re trying to get to is.

Alida Burke: (20:09)
Yes. Growcer started in 2016 as actually more of a school initiative than anything else while we were at the University of Ottawa learning and implementing social enterprise considerations and facets into business. And I think we see that more and more now, and it’s a natural fit in agriculture too, in terms of how can you find ways, from the environmental perspective and social perspective and how it all fits together. We weren’t farmers to begin with, so it was definitely a big, big learning curve. We got our first few farms– the first one was in Churchill, Manitoba, where we had a great partner with the Churchill Northern Studies Center to support the first of this type of farm in Canada to grow year-round, at least the first of ours, I should say.

Alida Burke: (21:01)
And so that was a really pivotal point for us to see what worked, what didn’t work, and continue to iterate on that type of technology on an ongoing basis. A lot of it is the inherent knowledge and process around growing in this type of technology on an ongoing basis. So that comes with experience and learning. So from then, you know, we’ve a network of just over 80 farms across Canada. They collectively grow about 10 million servings of vegetables every year, which is really great to see and really comes down to that community level too, of supporting local key initiatives, whether of course, the growing aspect is key, but then there’s the other facets that come with that, where it’s local job creation, local health facets, if there’s certain key issues that you’re looking to target that this can kind of play an important part in.

Alida Burke: (21:54)
So as you’ve probably experienced with your farm, it kind of brings people to together. It’s that community aspect that your farm supports. So it’s those key facets that are so impactful and that really kind of gets us up and going in the morning. But to go back to, I guess that evolutionary process is really how it, we went through it, it’s a lot of learning as we were going, year over year, with farm over farm… It’s perfecting that key operation to make sure people are successful.

Clinton Monchuk: (22:28)
If I understand correctly, like what tweaked your interest is when you went into a northern community where, you know, growing food is very limited, if at all in some of these communities. So is that how you felt that there was this need, that desire for some of these communities to actually have the option to get fresh local-produced food?

Alida Burke: (22:48)
Yeah, a hundred percent. It was originally we thought, oh, maybe we can start a project where we work with a local community to grow food year-round. And as we went through the process, we realized there wasn’t a solution that we could tap into that we could do it right away. So we kind of built the business that we had wished there was eight years ago with the support of communities that wanted to do this themselves. A big topic and a big theme that we’ve seen over the last eight years has been around food sovereignty. How can we create a resilient local food system that is not a hundred percent reliant on long supply chains, supply chains that can be disrupted? And interestingly, over the last few years, we’ve seen that sentiment and that local food movement grow consistently in the people that we speak to, as a key factor and a very important one to make sure that they can rely on something that’s local and then that they can kind of grow and maintain themselves.

Clinton Monchuk: (23:55)
So you were on Dragon’s Den, but just touch on your experience about this because it truly is interesting that entrepreneurial nature of this to try and go forward and, and maybe just give the listeners a little bit of a background on that.

Alida Burke: (24:08)
Yes. We filmed back in 2018 and it was a really great experience. A little behind the scenes is that typically, they’ll go to city to city to do your pitch, basically to see if they will bring you to Toronto to do the full-fledged filming in downtown CBC headquarters. And we were fortunate enough to be able to move on to that process and we officially aired in early 2019. We had a really, yeah, great experience. The only thing that kind of was a wrench in our plans was they wanted something visual that you could kind of see and touch and feel what it is that you do. So we thought, okay, we’ll bring a full rack of produce that we were growing in Ottawa and have it onsite and on set. Very difficult to bring that from Ottawa to Toronto. And we had some high ambitions. And then what we learned was that you can’t have any water on set, which is a challenge when you’re growing hydroponically where it’s all water, all water. So all the plants died overnight before filming the next day. But they did their creative magic, so you can’t tell… You can tell if you are looking closely, but they got some good shots to kind of make sure you don’t really see that they did not last and had a bit of a challenging onscreen debut. But it was a really great experience and they were all very kind and, you know, supportive for that next, you know, generation of Canadian entrepreneurs, I guess you could say. So, really great experience and for us, we see it come back every once in a while, whether it’s reruns or it used to be on some streaming services, and it’s a great way for people to kind of get introduced to what we do. We’ve got a few farmers that came through that channel, and then a lot of people who are interested in this type of technology who might want to work for Growcers. It’s a thing I hear a lot: “I saw your episode on Dragon’s Den and…” x, y, z. So it’s been a really fruitful thing that has paid dividends over the last few years.

Clinton Monchuk: (26:08)
It’s a feel-good story, right? Because you’re trying to kind of help some of those communities that maybe like we said, don’t necessarily have access to the fresh food all the time. Do you feel this is one of those solutions that we need to really, hone in on to allow the communities to actually have access to some of these nutrient dense and good food that’s grown locally?

Alida Burke: (26:34)
For sure. I think for us, our main goal and mission is to create some local resilient food networks, especially in areas where that’s just not possible. And so where we started, and a lot of the folks that we’ve supported over the years has been in those remote and many places, Indigenous communities where there just isn’t an option to grow year-round and a lot of want and intent to build something that’s local so that they can rely on that year round. Over the past eight or so years though, you know, we’ve seen that diversify too in terms of a lot of our clientele are food cooperative stores that are looking to have a local option that they can have for their, you know, have a quality product on the store shelves, especially in Western Canada. We see, we see that a lot.

Alida Burke: (27:22)
And then farmers who are looking to diversify, we see that too in more in southern Canada where let’s say there might be a dairy farm and are looking to grow crops as well. So definitely a strong tool in the tool chest, I guess you could call it. To complement and further strengthen, especially in these types of crops where, you know, otherwise it would have to be I imported. So definitely I think could be a really key facet as we continue to have, you know, climate shifts and challenges and reliability for year-round growing. I think this plays an important part in that.

Clinton Monchuk: (27:58)
How many do you have? I think you mentioned it before, but there’s how many?

Alida Burke: (28:02)
Yeah, we’re just over 80 farms across Canada.

Clinton Monchuk: (28:05)
80 farms. Wow. So in terms of Growcer, what do you consider one farm to be? Is that like one container, is it multiple containers? How do you kind of talk about that with one of your farms?

Alida Burke: (28:16)
We typically call one container one farm, and then once we look at multiple farms, we usually call that a farm plex. So, a three-farm farmplex, let’s call it, is something where it’s a bit of a bigger footprint. But yeah, one farm is what we would call it.

Clinton Monchuk: (28:33)
And again, my mind always goes through the process that I have to go through and the labor that I have to find for my own farm in different seasons. But does it take one full-time person or is it a part-time person to run one of your modular vertical farms? Or is it numerous people?

Alida Burke: (28:50)
Typically what you look at in terms of the labor in the farm, is about 25 hours a week. So that includes all of the, you know, cleaning, seeding, transplanting, harvesting, things like that. So all more looking like part-time, and then once you have multiple farms, then you’re able to kind of build out a team there to do all of that.

Clinton Monchuk: (29:13)
So if you had this modular farm, are you able to grow various different products? We talked about some of the leafy greens, but would you be able to also have say a portion of it that’s strawberries?

Alida Burke: (29:28)
Not strawberries specifically, just because it has a different method. So it’s like a gutter system with a different substrate we call it, and different lighting. However, in the type of growing of, let’s say leafy greens, you want to grow lettuce, spinach, arugula, those types of things, you can grow in the one unit. The way that we optimize it is the best neutral for all of those different types of things. But then some of our farmers, like Nipissing First Nation, they have multiple farms and they have each unit is dialed in for a specific crop. So let’s say in one farm they do a spinach, more like cold weather crops, and another it’s all lettuce, so it might be a few degrees warmer. So different things like that where you’re honing in some key variables, but with something like strawberries, that would be a little bit more difficult.

Clinton Monchuk: (30:20)
Yeah. So, now how much food does one of these containers actually produce? Like, is it, is it enough for how many people? I don’t even know.

Alida Burke: (30:31)
Yeah, so it depends on how many farms you have, but if we go down at its core one farm, you are looking at about 800 to 900 heads of produce per week. So, typically we look at that.. if you’re looking at one piece of produce per person or serving, that’s about 2000 to 3000 people, let’s say. But if we look at it and quantify it in a different perspective, let’s say you have a CSA box where you’re having a few different types of crops within that, then you’re looking, let’s say approximately 115 to 120 boxes per week. So one of our farm partners, Altario School, I should say, they’re in Alberta and they’re an agriculture school where the kids learn about raising sheep and cattle and they have bees as well. And they also, do this type of farming. And they don’t just grow it, they also sell it. So they have a CSA box in their community. So this is maybe a good way of visualizing what that looks like, in terms of supporting their town in Alberta.

What does CSA mean? CSA in this context refers to a “community supported agriculture” box. It’s essentially a business model where “subscribers” pay upfront for a certain number of boxes throughout the harvest season. This allows the grower to have the cash to buy their materials (seeds, nutrients) for a predetermined customer base instead of fronting the cost themselves and hoping they recoup their costs when they sell.

Clinton Monchuk: (31:38)
I do believe that fundamentally changes your mindset about food when you have the opportunity to grow it, right? Like, it just provides an experience that really is priceless, right?

Alida Burke: (31:50)
A hundred percent. It’s a hands-on experience that you wouldn’t otherwise get, except if you were maybe in a farming family.

Clinton Monchuk: (31:57)
I want to say thank you very much Alida, for being part of the podcast today. It really was super interesting and great for our listeners to understand a little bit more about vertical farming. So thank you very much.

Alida Burke: (32:07)
Well, thank you so much for having me.

Clinton Monchuk: (32:16)
I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to our Ask a Farmer podcast. We at Canadian Food Focus value the input from our listeners and ask that you share the podcast with your friends and family. Remember, this is a two-way street, so we seek your input for future segments that are of interest to you about food and farming. To do this, please click on the ‘Ask Us’ icon at the top of our website, canadianfoodfocus.org. While you’re there, feel free to follow our numerous social media links and sign up for our newsletter. This segment was produced and edited by Angela Larson, research and writing by Dorothy Long and Penny Eaton.