Three research Centers have monitored and assessed New York City’s food system response to COVID-19 to date and over the next 18 months. This report is a first independent assessment of the effects of COVID-19 on NY food system and an assessment of the many public and private responses.

In this first report, the Centers examined the effects of the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences on New York’s food system and the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers. The Centers also discussed the creation and early implementation of some of the City’s responses to COVID-19 related food system changes and offered concrete actions that public officials and agencies, civil society groups and others can take with a focus on how to minimize the harms and maximize the opportunities to address the underlying problems the pandemic has exacerbated.