Bah Phrang Roy

Founder

Founder of North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS)

Bah Phrang Roy is the founder of North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS)[1], an Indian non-profit working on rural & agriculture and environment from Shillong.

Phrang Roy, usually addressed as Bah Phrang Roy, is an indigenous development specialist from the Khasi community of Meghalaya in north-east India. He founded the North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS) in 2012 and is its founding chairperson, and coordinates the Rome-based Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty.

He spent much of his career at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and in 2002 became its assistant president, the first indigenous person appointed at the level of an assistant secretary-general of the United Nations.

Career

Roy began grassroots development work in western India in 1971. He joined IFAD in 1981 and led agricultural projects across Africa and Asia before being appointed assistant president in 2002. He joined the Christensen Fund in 2007.

In May 2010 he was instrumental in establishing the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty, and he coordinates it from Rome.

In 2012 he founded NESFAS in Meghalaya. The organisation works with Khasi, Garo and other indigenous communities on agroecology, local food systems and the use of wild and neglected food plants. Working with village elders, local cooks and nutritionists, NESFAS has introduced wild edible species gathered from the surrounding landscape into school meals in Meghalaya.

He is an advisory member of the Agroecology Fund in the United States, IPES-Food in Belgium, TABLE at Oxford, and the Global Hub on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems in Rome. He spoke on community-led sustainable food systems at the COP29 climate conference in 2024.[2][3][4]

North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS)

NESFAS works with indigenous communities across Northeast India on biodiversity conservation, agroecology, nutrition and youth leadership, running community-led school meal programmes and documenting traditional food systems in partnership with FAO and UNDP.

North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS) reports the following, on its own site: