On the side of the road in an unmarked white van, the award-winning investigative journalist Nelufar Hedayat, known for her global stories about women’s rights and cultural issues, such as The Traffickers, meets an undercover reporter working for the animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing. The unidentified man shares secret clips from his time spent on a dairy farm in the Northeast.

The last few years have been hard on co-ops, especially ones that had grown accustomed to being the only outlet for local and organic food products. Many food cooperatives, like the Good Earth Market in Billings, Montana, have been forced to shut their doors after decades in business.

In last week’s presidential budget, the administration proposed replacing most Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits with a pre-selected box of mostly dry goods like peanut butter, pasta and cereal. They wanted to stop benefit recipients from choosing their own food, including redeeming their federal assistance at farmers’ markets such as those our organization manages across Los Angeles.

A federal court granted the Environmental Protection Agency a victory Thursday, allowing regulators to give U.S. livestock producers more time to comply with a mandate on reporting emissions from animal waste. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals will give farms and animal producers until at least May 1 to begin reporting emissions — mostly ammonia and hydrogen sulfide — emitted by animal waste.