"We have been involved with radishes for a week now, and with spring onions a week earlier," says Jochen Fehmel, Sales Manager of the vegetable and commercial enterprise in Mutterstadt. Despite the cold and late winter, the farmer was largely satisfied with the quality of the early goods. “We had frost and the weather conditions were far from optimal for cultivation. However, there were hardly any quality problems. I'm surprised how well the products are holding up.”
The major supplier expects sales of radishes in the so-called Holy Week -the days leading up to Easter- to increase rapidly. A doubling of the normal sales volume is not unthinkable, although at present products from South Europe and North Africa are also available. Fehmel: “Our advantage, of course, is that Germans prefer regionally produced goods and the price differences between domestic and imported radishes are quite small. In addition, radishes are simply the article for Easter. As a result, there is usually a decline after the holidays; that is, a drop of about 25 percent below the average sales level.”
The season of regional open-country produce in Rhineland-Palatinate usually runs from March to November. Vegetable specialist Fehmel confirms that in some product areas new varieties are being tried. “Research is certainly progressing, but it is also becoming increasingly difficult. If a variety has a good resistance, it often lacks another factor, such as optics or processing. It is always a balance of parameters. A perfect variety does not exist; there is always some minor aspect somewhere.”
Family business
Since the takeover of the first-generation family business in 1990, the Fehmel vegetable farm is operating and expanding in the Ludwigshafen area on the Rhine. Since the 90’s, the cultivated areas have been continuously expanded and the premises have been enlarged. Currently the company has an acreage of about 250 hectares. In addition, the company's parent plant in Mutterstadt is the main hub for the vegetables. There are the advantages of a very good infrastructural connection to the transport network, an extensive picking and cooling area and loading docks for fast road shipping.
For more information:
FeSa Obst- & Gemüsehandels GmbH & Co. KG
Peter Fehmel
Im Grund 1
67112 Mutterstadt
Tel.: 06234 – 947 670
Fax: 06234 – 947 671 7
Email: info@fe-sa.de
Web: www.fe-sa.de