Vocal for Local

The North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society, (NESFAS) was born out of collaborative activities between the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (The Indigenous Partnership) and Slow Food International.

NESFAS is a grassroots organisation based out of Shillong, Meghalaya that aims to connect people to the pleasure and importance of tasty, local, healthy food that is inextricable form our responsibility towards the environment and the preservation of agrobiodiversity. NESFAS believes that food, when responsibly produced, protects the environment, enhances our health and well being and highlights the role of women as custodians of our agrobiodiversity and our food ways.

NESFAS, hopes to recognise that traditional agricultural systems continue to preserve and promote biodiversity through being “vocal for local.” The organisation was founded in the philosophy that within traditional food systems qualitative aspects of food, which is an expression of biodiversity, are highly emphasized.

So while, unfortunately, many in the world of research and development have turned a blind eye to these highly comprehensive aspects, the most salient features of traditional food systems, in contrast, have been their intrinsic values. These values have for long supported a food system that is sustainable and bio-culturally diverse and is dictated by the socio-cultural norms based on how man interacts with his ecology.

Mrs. Diona Ranee, a local farmer from the Khasi Hills ““As a farmer, I grow a variety of crops for food security and seed sovereignty. As a mother, I do it to feed my children. Agriculture is like a mother to me and she feeds her family. My duty towards her as a daughter is to nurture her and protect her from evil” is a voice that speaks the sentiments of many farmers like her. It is this deep connection that a farmer has with his land that, NESFAS, works to highlight and foster.

NESFAS believes that these values “vocal for local” play a centric role in developing a good, clean and fair food system. Understanding the dynamics of the modern day, the urban and rural youth, the farmers and the consumers.

NESFAS tries to re-establish the connections that people of the North East, whose identity is defined by the food they eat and thus their agricultural practices, have to the intrinsic values of food. It tries to do so through various activities that involve community participation that touch topics like livelihoods, food festivals, documentation and intergenerational knowledge transfer. It creates a platform where grassroots peoples voice their opinions, exchange knowledge among each other and bring together partners from different sectors NESFAS works with at enhancing agro biodiversity leading to food sovereignty.