Holy crap - what information do you have about these people that makes you think they are engaging in a publicity exercise, rather than simply trying to help?
I mean, I wouldn't call it a publicity exercise, but they quite explicitly say they need to make up for lost tourism income. Call it an operational pivot.
The lesson here is it's good to have a diversity of offerings. Some of their budget probably comes from historic site funds and maybe they also offer weddings or events, but the point is there certainly is a commercial interest in this.
If they were trying to get flour to people in the most efficient way possible they'd be using that manpower to repackage from wholesale distributors. There's no shortage of flour milling capacity -- the shortages are distribution related.
This is touched on in the article.
As it stands, they're really producing a negligible amount of flour. A nice gesture, but not the kind of thing you'd do if you're earnestly trying to address a problem. It's very clearly a stunt -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
This flour could be selling higher, and creating more incentive to produce.
But I agree, that publicity stunt bit is needlessly agressive