Shaoulee works closely with farmers and rural communities to restore dignity and value to farming. By paying significantly above-market rates and creating local processing jobs—particularly for women—we help reduce rural-to-urban migration pressures and strengthen local livelihoods. Our women-led team and transparent farmer partnerships are central to our social mission rooted in Gross National Happiness.
Some dishes fell out of our kitchens simply because the grains got harder to find. Now that they are back, so are the recipes. Five traditional preparations using barley, millet and maize, written simply enough to cook this week.
It sounds like poor business. Pay more for your raw material and watch your margin shrink. We have done it since 2013, and it is the reason Shaoulee works. Here is the thinking behind the decision, and what it has meant for 4,500 farming families.
Between a farmer’s field in the highlands and the porridge in your bowl, a grain of millet passes through remarkably few hands. We walk you through every step of that short journey, from harvest and collection to gentle milling, and explain why keeping it short matters.
More than nine in ten of our team are women. Many came to us from difficult circumstances and found steady income, new skills and a place where their work counts. Five of them share, in their own words, what this mill has meant to their lives.
Every bag of imported flour costs more than the ngultrum on the label. It carries away farm income, weakens rural livelihoods, and leaves Bhutan’s food supply resting on someone else’s harvest. We look at what that dependence actually costs, and what it would take to shift.
Since 2013 we have paid Bhutanese farmers up to 40% above prevailing market rates, currently Nu. 35,000 to 40,000 per tonne for maize and Nu. 70,000 per tonne for finger millet. Alongside fair prices we offer a guaranteed buyer and processing jobs close to home, most of them held by women. Thousands of farming families now earn properly from the land they work, which is Gross National Happiness put into practice rather than printed on a wall.
This is your most distinctive and emotionally powerful claim. Plenty of food brands say clean and local; far fewer are genuinely women-majority and lifting people from disadvantage. Lead with it.
This is your most distinctive and emotionally powerful claim. Plenty of food brands say clean and local; far fewer are genuinely women-majority and lifting people from disadvantage. Lead with it.
Concrete, forward-looking, and true to the indigenous-grain mission. It gives the section a “why it matters for the future” note.
