The Dashboard

NYC Farm scene

Use the Dashboard to visualize the regional economic and environmental tradeoffs of NYC’s values-based food procurement policies

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Public institutions increasingly use food procurement to advance climate, health, community, and economic goals. These values-based approaches can create important co-benefits—but also trade-offs—across economic, environmental, and social outcomes. Better understanding the impacts of different food policy actions can help policymakers design and implement more effective food policies. The City Food Policy Project brings together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders to (1) assess the trade-offs of public food procurement strategies and (2) develop tools to support values-based decision-making.

This interactive dashboard helps users explore the economic and environmental tradeoffs associated with different public food procurement policy and implementation options.

It is designed for a wide range of users including procurement staff, policymakers, researchers, and organizations working on public food procurement policy. The dashboard displays selected results from a larger modeling effort that reflects New York–specific food system conditions. For the dashboard, we focus on six public food procurement policy actions and three food commodities (beans, beef, and leafy greens).

Users can:

Select the policy actions to examine
Decide how policy actions are defined and implemented
Choose the outcomes and indicators they care about
View how different stakeholder groups might be affected

The dashboard is interactive. Definitions and tooltips are provided throughout to support interpretation. We encourage all user to review these explanations as they explore the dashboard.

Learn more: Visit our GitHub site, last updated 2/2026.

Food Policy Actions

In 2022, New York City formally established the Good Food Purchasing initiative, which guides City agencies in aligning food spending with six core values: nutrition, local economies, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, valued workforce, and transparency. These values shape how agencies design procurements, how vendors and supply chain stakeholders develop and price products, and how bids are evaluated and selected. The Food Policy Actions featured in this dashboard were identified in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy. The first part of each Food Policy Action name reflects its Good Food Purchasing value alignment, while the second describes how New York City is advancing (or considering advancing) progress toward that value.

USDA Organic

Organic Purchasing

MWBE

Minority or Women-owned Business Enterprise Purchasing

Local Purchasing

Local Purchasing

Community

Community Hiring from Small Businesses

Menu Changes

Middle Infrastructure

Approach

In selecting our focus commodities and their supply chains, our goal was to choose items that are purchased in substantial quantities by NYC, are grown or raised by New York State farmers, and are not already being sourced locally in substantial amounts. The decision to focus on (1) salad bar greens & cabbage, (2) edible beans, and (3) beef (cull dairy) was guided by data (see the GitHub site for details) and made jointly by the City Food Policy team and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Food Policy staff.

The model currently focuses on beans.

Salad

Salad Bar Greens & Cabbage

Holstein pic

Beef (cull dairy)

Dry Beans

Edible Beans

Who Is This Dashboard For?

The Dashboard is designed to support insight and decision-making for four key stakeholder groups. Each group interacts with the food system in different ways, and the Dashboard provides tailored information to help them understand tradeoffs, evaluate policy options, and assess potential impacts.

Procurement Staff

Procurement Staff

Staff responsible for developing bids, contracts, menu planning

Food-Policy-Analysts-1

Food Policy Analysts

Academic Researchers, UN FAO, IFPRI

Food Policy Decision Makers-

Food Policy Decision Makers

Government actors including NYC Mayor’s Office of Food Policy and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets

Practitioners

Practitioners

Organizations working to influence food, agricultural and nutrition policy

What we are showing you is a DASHBOARD not the MODEL.

The underlying model produces hundreds of results. The Dashboard highlights only the indicators most relevant to NYC and New York State policy goals.

Dashboard Glossary Visit Dashboard Model Documentation

Thanks to our funders/partners: