Healthy Flour, Healthy Profits

Gideon Milling, a stone ground milling company in the Western Cape, was launched in 2013 by a group of entrepreneurs to improve farmers’ profitability and food security. Aubrey Terblanche and Jurianne Schreuder spoke to Glenneis Kriel about the company’s vision and success.

- Glenneis Kriel

When Aubrey Terblanche, a commercial pilot, learnt about his farmer friends’ struggle to make profits in the wheat market, he began thinking of ways to improve their situation. Much discussion and planning followed, which eventually led to the establishment of Gideon Milling in Belville in the Western Cape, a stone ground milling company with six shareholders. The mill was designed to give the farmers greater involvement in the value chain, while at the same time supplying the market with good-quality, healthy flour at an affordable price.

“My vision was to create a situation where neither farmers nor consumers were exploited, as happens so often when agricultural produce gets lost in the value chain. I wanted to enhance food security in South Africa to avoid the kind of Arab Spring situation that broke out in North Africa and the Middle East in 2010 because of exorbitant bread prices,” Terblanche explains.

He was motivated by the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, who after the Second World War wrote the famous poem ‘First They Came’.

It reads: “First they came for the Communist. And I did not speak out because I was not Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews. And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me.”

Terblanche says the poem, which deals with the fate of minority groups, made him realise he had to take a stand for farmers and food security. To do this, however, he needed access to the market, which he achieved through establishing the mill.

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