On November 28th, the City of Milan (Italy) together with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFNF) released a new report on the role of cities in advancing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). FOOD & CITIES: The Role of Cities for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals offers a comprehensive account of most recent urban food policy research and practice around the world and includes sections on seven exemplary cities: Milan, New York, Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso , Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Sydney, and Tel Aviv-Yafo. Institute staff contributed a chapter on New York City that examines the role of municipal food policy over the last decade in advancing two global frameworks for sustainable development and urban food systems – the UN SDGs and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP). BCFNF is a multidisciplinary think tank focused on the economic, scientific, social and environmental factors that shape agri-food systems and the advancement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through food.

To assess how New York City’s recent food policies addressed the SDGs and the MUFPP frameworks, CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute researchers used these two sets of global indicators to identify 67 city and state food policies implemented in the last decade (although some had been approved a few years earlier). The analysis revealed that four SDG goals –those on eliminating hunger, ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all, promoting inclusive and equitable quality education for all, and strengthening governance for implementation of the SDGs – have the highest number of policies implemented and six have two or fewer policies implemented.

Read the chapter