The BEHR company celebrates its 130th anniversary in 2025. The family-owned company, now in its fourth and fifth generation, has its origins in a small vegetable-growing business in Rosenweide in the municipality of Stelle. As early as 1895, vegetables were being grown here in the open field and transported by barge along the Elbe to the Hamburg Wholesale Market for sale. Today, the company cultivates around 4,000 hectares of open-field vegetables, almost 600 hectares of which are grown according to organic guidelines, and sells around 60 different vegetable crops.
Rudolf and his daughter Christine Behr
One of these crops is iceberg lettuce. Rudolf Behr was the first person in Germany to cultivate this in the 1970s and made it popular in the form we know today, as pure heads without large surrounding leaves. The BEHR company is also always innovative in the field of mechanization to optimize working methods and processes. This is because modern technology enables efficient and resource-saving work, both in conventional and organic farming. It is therefore a decisive key to remaining future-proof as a family business.
For more information:
www.behr-ag.com