Dressed in a brightly colored, patterned dress and wearing stylishly large, black rimmed glasses, 51 year-old Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr flashes the most fantastic smile. The mayor of Freetown, Seirra Leone in West Africa has travelled more than 4,000 miles to visit Charleston and South Carolina's Sea Islands. She must be exhausted. Yet she glows with warmth and enthusiasm.

"We're family," she tells an audience gathered inside the Frissell Community House at the Penn Center on Saint Helena Island. "We should be a bit closer than we have been to date."

South Carolina's farming industry remains a stalwart economic engine. With approximately 25,000 farms over 4.9 million acres of land, the Palmetto State's agricultural community maintains its relevance in South Carolinians' day-to-day lives.

In a changing world, though, South Carolina's farming industry still continues to face the same old problems that it has for years.

Leading up to the 2020 election, South Carolina Lede is keeping you up to speed on what the candidates are saying on the campaign trail in the Palmetto State with these "Trail Bites" mini-episodes.

On this edition for the week of July 18, 2019, host Gavin Jackson takes us to the recent South Carolina Democratic Party Convention to hear from presidential hopefuls former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

On this episode of South Carolina Lede, host Gavin Jackson is joined by the Aiken Standard's Colin Demarest to discuss the recent special report "Lethal Legacy," written by Demarest and the Post and Courier's Thad Moore, detailing how South Carolina is expected to be home to tons of plutonium for decades, according to an internal memo obtained by the papers. The excess plutonium is housed in a 65-year-old building at the Savanah River Site which federal regulators have rated as poor.

South Carolina’s freshwater lakes and ponds are as vibrant as they come, full of pretty plants with pretty names like water primrose and water hyacinth. The only trouble is, these plants shouldn’t be here.