About 45 minutes north of Des Moines, Iowa, amid endless fields of corn, soybeans and hog and turkey barns, an Iowa family has transformed its former hog farm into an innovative specialty mushroom operation that supplies fresh produce and value-added goods throughout the state.
For three decades, the Faaborg family raised pigs in the nation’s leading pork-producing state. Like many industrial animal producers, operating within the system meant navigating high overhead costs, volatile markets and a contract structure that keeps many growers in a cycle of debt.
However, after years of vision, hard work and support from The Transfarmation Project, the family’s farm looks vastly different today. The former hog farm has been fully converted into 1100 Farm, a specialty mushroom operation, and the farm’s former manure lagoon has been remediated into a clean, freshwater pond.
Growing up on the farm alongside his four siblings, Tanner Faaborg loved many parts of rural life, though he always dreaded the daily chores in the hog barns. After leaving home for college and traveling the world, he eventually returned to Iowa, determined to plant roots and lead his family in transforming their farm’s future.
“This is the culmination of years of work,” says Faaborg, the founder of 1100 Farm. “It started out as just a crazy idea or vision with lots of ups and downs. Now the farm conversion is complete, the manure lagoon has been remediated into a freshwater pond and the mushrooms are growing.”
Breaking the Cycle of Industrial Debt
The Transfarmation Project is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to helping farmers transition out of industrial animal agriculture and into plant-based specialty crop production. It operates on two main pillars: helping farmers execute physical farm transitions and changing the broader public narrative around factory farming.
According to USDA data, more than 60% of industrial livestock and poultry farmers operate with a negative net income, says Heather Decker, social media manager for Transfarmation. Under typical contract farming setups, megacorporation “integrators” require farmers to take on hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in debt to construct specialized barns. When loans near payoff, integrators often mandate costly facility upgrades, leaving farmers with few alternatives and little financial control, she says.
Transfarmation provides a viable off-ramp for farmers wanting to exit these relationships. To offer a blueprint, Transfarmation establishes demonstration hubs — real-world facilities where alternative agricultural models are tested and perfected. Following its first hub in Wadesboro, N.C., which converted a poultry facility into a specialty vegetable greenhouse, the Faaborg farm in Iowa serves as the organization’s second hub.
Specialty mushrooms were selected for the Iowa location due to their rapid growth cycle and high profit margins. Today, the Faaborgs generate revenue through fresh harvests as well as high-demand wellness products, including reishi tinctures, lion’s mane tinctures and mushroom coffee.
Overcoming Skepticism With Real-World Results
Switching from hogs to specialty mushrooms in the heart of pork country initially drew doubt from local producers.
“A lot of his neighbors first approached him and his family’s transition with a lot of skepticism,” Decker says. “Hog farming in Iowa right now goes together like peanut butter and jelly. But that’s something that we would like to see shift.”
That initial skepticism began to turn into interest when Transfarmation hosted a ribbon cutting at the hub in August. Neighboring farmers attended to ask questions, observe the converted facilities and learn directly from the Faaborg family about the steep learning curve of growing mushrooms from scratch.
The ripple effect is already underway: Inspired by the Faaborgs’ success, another Iowa farmer has reached out to Transfarmation to begin transitioning their own farm.
A Model for Systemic Change
Beyond offering technical and business guidance, Transfarmation says it uses learnings from its demonstration hubs to build evergreen educational toolkits and inform future transition strategies, such as exploring soil remediation techniques around former confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
For Faaborg and his family, finding success in growing mushrooms represents something larger than a business change; it serves as proof that the future of farming is already shifting.
“People are drawn to the change that we made,” Faaborg says. “Our hope is to inspire other farmers to make the same change and prove to policymakers that this concept can be successful. Our farm transition can be successfully replicated anywhere.”
Faaborg adds that the momentum shows no signs of slowing down.
“Agricultural change is not only possible, but it’s probable. It’s inevitable,” he says. “It’s not a wild pipe dream that’s decades down the road; it is happening already, right here. I want people to feel hopeful, not dreadful, about the future of our food system.”
