NESFAS was established in March 2012. It emerged as an outcome of collaborative activities between the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP) and Slow Food International. 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. In the framework of this initiative, NESFAS worked with the Kashi people, a matriarchal Indigenous People, in 5 villages in Meghalaya (North-East India). All five villages lie in the Himalayan foothills, over 1400 meters above sea level, experiencing a monsoon climate.