Increasingly, cities, municipalities, and states across the world are recognizing both their incredible capacity and fundamental responsibility to utilize procurement dollars in a values-based approach, resulting in the well-being of not only their own populations, but also the rural regions that surround them.
“The way institutions purchase food can positively impact a food system, and strong modeling will better support their decision-making process and the food purchasing environment.”
— Dr. John Reich, FFAR Scientific Program Director
The policies that inform how cities purchase food provide critical opportunities to drive regional resilience and positively impact a region’s economic and environmental goals. To be effective, food policy plans require consideration of local conditions. What works for one city may not work for another. Production systems associated with generating positive environmental impacts are not automatically transferable to other locations; their impacts may vary depending on numerous factors, ranging from microclimates and soil types to transportation and distribution-related infrastructure.
As regions across the world leverage public food procurement to meet a combination of climate, health, community development, and economic goals, these policies and programs need to be aware of the trade-offs and co-benefits their policies and programs will create. Having more robust data about the economic, environmental, and social-cultural tradeoffs of the program can help bolster support to implement good food policies.
To be effective, food policy plans require consideration of local conditions.
What works for one city may not work for another.
The City Food Policy Project (CFPP) brings together researchers, policy practitioners, and food systems stakeholders to:
In 2021, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Food Policy (NYC MOFP) launched a 10-year food plan, Food Forward NYC, that adopts a national Good Food Procurement Program (GFPP) framework to steer the city’s budget of more than $300 million annually in food purchases in a new direction. The New York City Public School system is the second largest purchaser of food in the U.S.
The CFPP project team is currently working with the NYC MOFP to analyze potential impacts and tradeoffs of different values-based procurement policy scenarios that could occur both within NYC as well as across the broader region.
Funded by the USDA Foundation for Food and Agriculture and the Rockefeller Foundation, this collaboration will create a model that can be used by New York food system stakeholders to guide food policy and implementation scenarios that is replicable and adaptable for use by other municipalities.
The work with New York contains four component objectives:
Drawing on publicly available data as well as input from food and agriculture stakeholders around New York State, this three-year research collaborative adapts an agent-based research model, building upon past agent-based modeling work in Denver, Colorado.
The CFPP model allows for the simulation of complex systems and the emergent behavior that may result from the autonomous actions of system agents with each other and their environment.
This model can simulate a variety of potential changes to a city’s food policy environment and to observe any resulting effects or feedback throughout various stages of the supply chain.