Background

ABOUT NESFAS

NESFAS aims to connect people to the pleasure of tasty, healthy, local food that is inseparable from our responsibility towards the environment and the preservation of agrobiodiversity. NESFAS believes that food, when responsibly produced, protects the environment, enhances our health and wellbeing and affirms pride in our culture. In doing so it also highlights the role of women as nurturers and custodians of our agrobiodiversity and our food ways.

NESFAS BACKGROUND

NESFAS emerged as an outcome of collaborative activities between the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP) and Slow Food International. While Slow Food spotlights the importance of pleasure through good, clean and fair food, going hand in hand with our responsibility towards the environment, in its stead TIP reaffirms the importance of local food systems and the age-old role of Indigenous Peoples as guardians of agrobiodiversity. A role that is intrinsically linked to their cultural identity and to their right to food sovereignty, food and nutritional security. To this end, NESFAS endeavors to join hands and converge its activities with other likeminded individuals, institutions, government, other NGOs, etc., for the overall benefit, conservation and development of the indigenous communities in the North East of India.

MISSION

NESFAS is a platform that connects people to the pleasure and importance of local foods and in the process links them to its journey from farm to the fork. A journey that generates awareness towards our responsibility towards the environment and the preservation of the indigenous cultures and traditions. Working as a regional reflection of TIP, NESFAS works towards offering a singular platform for traditional knowledge systems and modern science as equal partners to charter the course of the “Future we want” for the well being of indigenous communities. As an outcome of the discussions and resolutions of ITM, NESFAS has embraced the framework of agroecology- as a science, a practice and a social movement, to explore it’s expanded mission.

 

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The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (Indigenous Partnership) supports indigenous peoples, local communities and their representatives to celebrate, defend and revitalize their
 food systems and agricultural practices at local and global levels through research, participatory initiatives and associated advocacy activities.  It is a network of indigenous communities and organizations committed to defining their own food and agricultural practices that sustain agrobiodiversity, assisted by scientists and policy researchers who value participatory agricultural research approaches.

Slow Food is a non-profit member-supported grassroots association, Slow Food was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.  Today Slow Food has over 100,000 members joined in 1,500 local chapters – worldwide, as well as a network of 2,000 food communities who practice small-scale and sustainable production of quality foods.
Slow Food’s approach to agriculture, food production and gastronomy is based on a concept of food quality defined by three interconnected principles:
GOOD – a fresh, flavorsome and healthy seasonal diet that satisfies the senses and is part of our local culture;
CLEAN – food production & consumption that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health;
FAIR – accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for small-scale producers.

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