Autonomy against the agri-food lobbies
By choosing to be a farmer-baker, you move away from integrated production models: this means that you are no longer dependent on large agri-food companies to produce and sell your products.
You’re counting on yourself to make the most of your cereals and the products that come from them: bread, pasta, buns, biscuits, cakes… And that’s just as well, because consumers are counting on this new resolution. They’re looking for direct sales from producers, they’re looking for short distribution channels. They shun the agri-food industry, which has largely abused their trust by introducing numerous toxic substances into their food… So the trusted alternatives in the fight against agri-food lobbies are local bakers.
Being a self-sufficient farmer-baker by producing your own flour
A farmer-baker has to master a number of skills. First of all, they need to know how to work the land and organise cereal production.
To develop, it’s essential to think carefully about the choice of seeds and the benefits of using old varieties. And since being a farmer-baker means managing everything from growing the cereals to turning them into bread, there’s one key stage that you also need to have a hand in: turning the cereals into flour.
Finding the right mill
If you want to be a self-sufficient farmer-baker and stand up to the industrial lobbies by turning your cereals into flour, you need to choose a mill that :
Meets your yield requirements Helps you get away from these lobbies, by focusing on healthy products
And to succeed in producing quality flour, the solutions are actually quite limited. Because the problem with traditional stone mills and roller mills, which are the most common types of mill, is that they don’t respect the cereals you’ve worked so hard to grow.
With these mills and their excessively fast rotation speed, the cereal is oxidised: the result is refined white flour that is not very digestible and is very poor in nutritional terms.
So if you want to be a self-sufficient and profitable farmer-baker, you’re going to have to rely on another ally. And that ally is the Astrié mill. It supports bakers and cereal growers who want to promote themselves and their cereals, by enabling them to produce quality unrefined flour.
And to achieve this, it’s all down to the millstones: made from Sidobre granite, the mill’s two grindstones are micrometrically adjusted, so that they don’t crush the grain, but unroll it. The big advantage? You can choose to unroll any grain (wheat, buckwheat, rye, maize, chestnut…) as long as it is sufficiently dry.
That’s the key to being a self-sufficient farmer-baker!
Learn how to use the mill
But once you’ve found the right mill to help you become self-sufficient, you’ll need to learn how to use it by learning how to mill! Because becoming a miller isn’t something you’re born with ☺ You’ll need to go through a discovery phase, during which you’ll learn how to make the most of your Astrié mill, to become a profitable farmer baker.
This training course will help you gain a clearer understanding of :
- How the grain is processed in the mill
- How you can adjust the gap between the two millstones to unroll the grain
- How to change the mill sieve to produce different types of flour
- How to use the options you have chosen: how do the extraction and bagging options work to maximise your yield?
- Adjusting the mill’s output
- The power supply system for your Astrié mill
- The options available to you for producing gluten-free flour in compliance with all health standards
- Mill maintenance and cleaning
To be a self-sufficient farmer-baker with your own sales outlet
Once you’ve turned your cereals into quality flour, it’s time to start selling them! To be truly independent, sell your products directly from your own sales outlet:
- Showcase your mill at the heart of your shop, to create a bond of trust with your customers, by demonstrating how it works.
- Focus on a few recipes, but with 100% of the ingredients coming from your farm
- Display the nutritional benefits of your cereals and products: how much protein? In minerals? Vitamins? Fibre? Why this variety of cereal and not another? In this way, you can show your customers that you make healthy products of unique quality!
Being a self-sufficient farmer-baker is the key to relaunching your business: managing the entire manufacturing process for your product means ensuring that you offer your customers quality! And it’s thanks to this unique link with the consumer that you’ll succeed in developing your business.
