Bejo Brand Guidelines: Two North Holland Seed Families Merged in 1978

A grocer’s seed trade and a cabbage selector.

Bejo was formed in 1978, but its two halves are much older. The regional paper Rodi Dijk en Waard reported in November 2024 that Jacob Jong opened a grocery and seed trade in Noord-Scharwoude on 1 June 1899, and that from 1917 the business became a seed trader and seed grower. Dutch Wikipedia dates the other half, the seed firm of Cor Beemsterboer, to 1912. Bejo itself describes its founders as a baker’s son and a grocer who, more than a century ago, specialised in selecting and breeding cabbage, carrots and onions in the area around Warmenhuizen. The sources read for this guide do not describe either firm during the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940–45.

The two firms worked together long before they merged. Bejo says that in 1963 they made a joint investment in a new hybridisation technique, and that it went well enough for the companies to merge in 1978 as a family-run firm. Rodi describes the same step as a merger of Jacob Jong with the firm C. Beemsterboer, creating Bejo Zaden, based in Warmenhuizen. Dutch Wikipedia says a period of expansion followed in the 1980s, with branches in several European countries.

The older name is still remembered locally. In November 2024 descendants and former staff of Jacob Jong and Bejo met to mark 125 years since 1899, Rodi reported, and the family published a book, 125 jaar Jacob Jong 1899–2024, drawn from the firm’s archive.

Open-field crops, organic seed and bees.

Bejo breeds for open fields rather than glasshouses. The company says its range covers more than 40 crops and more than 1,100 varieties; Dutch Wikipedia, giving 2018 figures, counts more than 1,200 varieties across about 50 crops, among them brassicas, carrots, onions and asparagus, bred at stations in the Netherlands, Guatemala, India, Italy and Poland. For allium processing and for the distribution of parsnip, swede, spring greens and sprouting broccoli, Bejo says it works with partner companies.

Organic seed is a long-running thread. Bejo says it took its first steps in organic farming in the 1990s and marks 30 years of organic seed in 2026, with a range of more than 30 crops and over 150 varieties. It says it has used hot water and steam treatments as alternatives to chemical seed treatment, and that it was among the first to introduce onion varieties bred for resistance to mildew, naming Hylander and Redlander. In 2023 director John-Pieter Schipper told NH Nieuws that the company had begun growing organic seed about 25 years earlier, and that it was developing a celeriac without the hairy roots, at the request of processors. He told the broadcaster that agriculture should use less chemistry in future and that he did not want to wait for bans before acting.

Bejo says it does not treat organic and conventional farming as separate worlds: methods first worked out for organic seed are now used in its conventional production too, and the knowledge built for conventional seed feeds back into the organic range. Among recent organic varieties it names the courgette Onega and the cauliflower Alcantara.

The company also keeps its own bees, which it calls perhaps its most important employees: it lists 15,000 colonies and says it is active in bee breeding and research alongside its vegetable work. The Seed Valley network’s company profile points to a red pointed cabbage, Red Power, as an example of its breeding.

Trial fields, greenhouses and seed packs.

Vegetable seed companies sell something their customers rarely see in finished form. A breeder’s product is a variety: a tomato, a pepper, a carrot or a cabbage with traits that took years of crossing and selection to fix. The seed itself is small, dry and uniform, so most of these companies present themselves through what the seed becomes, and through the places where it is tested.

That is why the same images recur across the category. Trial fields in rows, greenhouses filled with trained tomato and cucumber plants, and close views of leaves and roots show the work of selection. Catalogues and websites favour cut tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers photographed on white, so that colour, shape and the inside of the fruit can be compared. Named varieties carry much of the message.

The audience is professional. Breeders such as these sell to commercial growers, propagators, processors and retailers rather than to home gardeners, and their packs and brochures carry practical information on sowing, growing conditions and the traits each company claims for its varieties. Several firms also show the stages that follow breeding: seed production by contract growers, then cleaning, sorting, germination testing and packing.

Open days are the most public face of the trade. In the north of North Holland, where companies including Enza Zaden and Bejo belong to the Seed Valley network, breeders invite customers to walk their trial fields and greenhouses each year; in September 2023 NH Nieuws reported that Bejo’s open days in Warmenhuizen drew visitors from about 70 countries. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company, and marks clearly what rests on its own word.

Still owned by the founders’ descendants.

Bejo remains a family business. The company says it is owned by two families, the descendants of Cor Beemsterboer and Jacob Jong, who see themselves as owners rather than simply shareholders. It gives its size as about 2,300 employees in 31 companies, with operations in more than 30 countries and sales in more than 100; Dutch Wikipedia, which lists branches in Europe, North and South America, Oceania, Asia and Africa, citing 2020 figures, gave about 1,900 staff, 700 of them in the Netherlands. The headquarters stays in Warmenhuizen, and the Seed Valley network lists more than a thousand Bejo employees in the Netherlands.

Its most public moment each year is the open days. In September 2023 NH Nieuws reported that Warmenhuizen was welcoming visitors from about 70 countries to Bejo’s fields, where the company shows which crops it is working on and how seed is processed before it leaves the site; the first days were for customers, and the Saturday was open to anyone interested. Schipper called it “always a wonderful week.”

Bejo is part of Seed Valley, a partnership of horticultural companies in North Holland, Dutch Wikipedia says, and the company says it works with the industry associations Plantum, ESA and ISF on questions of plant breeding and food production.

For a design guide, Bejo shows how a seed company built from two village firms can present itself through fields, bees and named varieties rather than a single founder story. Compare Enza Zaden, its family-owned Seed Valley neighbour in Enkhuizen, and Rijk Zwaan, another Dutch vegetable breeder. For this guide we use a field green, a peat ink and an onion copper on chaff with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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