RSA Group Reflections June 2025
Dear friends
I was fascinated to discover that recently in Turkey, a 5000 year old Küllüoba bread recipe has gone viral, with local consumers now lining up to taste modern interpretations of an ancient dough featuring ancestral ingredients like emmer wheat, and lentils. Küllüoba bread was brought back to new life after archaeologists uncovered a well preserved example at an early bronze age site. After scientists examined the charred remains, they partnered with local bakers to recreate the recipe, and the results have been enjoyed by thousands.
I’m not huge on viral trends, but I really don’t think I’ll be able to resist this one! I aim to spend a bit of time in the kitchen to create my own Küllüoba bread. I will let you know how it turned out.
Thinking about Küllüoba bread immediately made me think of the classic Pottage vegetable stew recipe, which was a staple of the medieval diet and which is replicated by family cooks all over the world to this day. Pottage has always just made natural sense. It’s a thick, hearty stew using whatever vegetables are in season and available, from leeks to cabbage, carrots, and turnips… all simmered with barley and fresh herbs. How could you possibly go wrong?
Stories about how centuries-old traditions and ways of thinking, eating and living resonate into the 21st century, illustrate one of the most fascinating things about the fresh produce industry in South Africa – the fact that our open market principles are as old as human civilisation itself, and have a track record of spurring socioeconomic growth and development over thousands of years.
It’s a little known reality that open markets were the original driving force of global trade over 4,000 years ago, in regions like Iraq and Syria. Equally, there is little public recognition today of the fact that Xenophon – the famed Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian – wrote about the essential principles of the open market system some 2 000 years before Adam Smith, who may well have ‘borrowed’ some of his key ideas.
One of the most important principles of open market trade that Xenophon explained all those years ago is that clear, well understood and evenly applied rules create ideal conditions for evenly distributed economic growth, and, following from this, socio-economic development. We see this fundamental truth in evidence every day in South Africa’s fresh produce open market system, which enjoys significant levels of trust from all participants, thanks largely to the rules, regulations and guardrails that guide all of our behaviour, and ensure authentic, reliable daily price discovery in the process.
Xenophon also wrote about how, as a young prince, Cyrus the Great was taught the central principles of open market systems. It is no accident that through his life Cyrus The Great was deeply involved in the freeing of slaves, articulating the world’s first early declarations of human rights, spreading standardised gold coins, and building the Royal Road, which laid the foundation of the famous Silk Road trade route, which, in turn, powered much of the world’s socio-economic growth until the mid-15th century.
Even in our current high-tech era, some of the best modern businesses and business models are still clearly deeply rooted in our common ancestry. And of course these ancient modes of operation can now be significantly enhanced and empowered with new digital tools. If you take the time to look back through the full range of human history, you find not only fascinating food recipes, but also a formula for achieving exactly the sort of positive socio-economic development much of the world, and especially the African continent, strives to achieve today. At RSA Group, we should consider ourselves extremely fortunate to be working with an incredibly well proven and stress-tested business model.
With such strong foundations beneath us, what can we and our industry achieve in future years? The possibilities really do seem limitless.
Best wishes
Jaco Oosthuizen
