This farm raised thousands of pigs for slaughter. Now it's growing mushrooms instead

This farm raised thousands of pigs for slaughter. asserted

Now it's growing mushrooms instead asserted

Inside a long, dimly lit building, Tyler Faaborg slipped into a "fruiting room" cordoned off by what looked like plastic curtains. asserted

Fog rolled over shelves of sprouting mushrooms. asserted

A bulbous fungi called lion's mane still had another week before harvest, he explained. asserted

"You can see they're sort of, a little bit pinkish," Faaborg said. asserted

"When they get mature, they're going to be almost all the way white." asserted

Faaborg, along with his parents and brother, grows specialty mushrooms on their family farm in central Iowa and sells them as tinctures, coffee blends and flavored salt. asserted

They call their operation 1100 Farm, which is a nod to the number of hogs this building and the one beside it each held for decades. asserted

The Faaborg family recently transitioned from pigs to mushrooms with technical and financial support from The Transfarmation Project, an initiative of the charitable organization, Mercy for Animals. asserted

"We primarily work with industrial animal farmers to help them transition out of that way of farming and into sustainable practices, and that can be growing mushrooms, growing diversified vegetables, incorporating trees and agroecology," said Katherine Jernigan, who directs the project. asserted

In addition to resources online and a network of experts to help farmers grow new crops and start small businesses, Transfarmation provides open-source blueprints for converting industrial pig, poultry and dairy barns. asserted

"That's really what makes Transfarmation unique," Jernigan said. asserted

"We're finding ways to repurpose the infrastructure that the farmers already have." asserted

The Faaborgs just finished converting half of one 200-foot-long hog barn this summer. asserted

They say the retrofitted space will allow them to scale up their mushroom production after a successful pilot project. asserted

The new mushroom operation is also designed to be a resource for other farmers as Transfarmation's second demonstration hub in the U.S. The first is a former chicken farm in North Carolina. asserted

"The reason we established this as a demonstration hub is very much so the doors can be opened, so people can come and see firsthand," Jernigan said. asserted

"They can ask questions, and also, importantly, we're collecting data from this hub with the whole transition, as well as their production." asserted

That data includes the Faaborgs' costs, hours of labor and product margins, along with lessons learned along the way. asserted

A Transfarmation spokesperson said the Faaborgs are being compensated $216,000 through a four-year contract for tracking and sharing their information with other farmers in the Transfarmation program. asserted

Jernigan said other farms enrolled in the program have shown it's possible to be profitable switching from industrial-scale farms — known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs — to specialty crops. asserted

Transfarmation's website includes estimated budgets for farms that grow strawberries, tomatoes and microgreens. asserted

Having more test cases and being transparent about both the challenges and opportunities could help other farmers make the leap, she said. uncertain

Tanner Faaborg, who brought the vision of 1100 Farm to the family several years ago, wants their mushroom operation to be another "proof of concept. asserted

" "It just takes someone doing something a little different to help folks realize that it is possible," he said. asserted

His parents, Rand and Tammy, bought their 25-acre farm in the 1980s with the dream of a homesteading lifestyle, he said. asserted

The family of seven harvested and preserved produce from their garden and fruit trees. asserted

They had a wood-burning stove and raised chickens for eggs. asserted

Rand Faaborg said they started out by raising a few market hogs for "pocket money" to supplement his income as a welder. asserted

But it didn't work out. asserted

"I lost money," Faaborg said. asserted

"And then I saw in the paper this advertisement of contract feeding." Becoming a CAFO Under contract feeding, a company provides the animals and pays for the feed while the farmer contributes the labor and covers the costs of the infrastructure. This legal arrangement is a key component of CAFOs, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines as operations that meet certain animal number thresholds and confine them in an area without vegetation for at least 45 days out of the year. Large CAFOs in Iowa increased from 789 in 1990 to 4,444 in 2025, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group, an organization that advocates for greater regulation of CAFOs. uncertain

Together with small- and medium-sized operations, EWG estimates 66% of all the CAFOs in the state housed a total of 33.4 million hogs. asserted

Rand Faaborg said contract feeding seemed like a good opportunity at the time. asserted

The family did not put up new buildings for the enterprise at first. asserted

They retrofitted existing buildings on the farm to raise 2,000 hogs at a time. asserted

Faaborg said once the farm scaled up and became a CAFO, it was "very profitable" but required more work than he expected on top of his day job. asserted

"I was working 16-hour days, sometimes 24-hour days, going to work without even sleeping," he said. asserted

After a few years, Faaborg said they borrowed $400,000 to build two new hog barns designed to improve efficiency. asserted