They Raised 8,000 Pigs a Year. Now They Grow Mushrooms

For more than 30 years, the Faaborg family raised pigs in Iowa. Their farm was a confined animal feeding operation, or CAFO, raising around 8,000 pigs every year. Individual barns held 1,100 animals at a time.

Today, one of those barns grows mushrooms. The family behind 1100 Farm in Radcliffe, Iowa, has transformed part of the former pig farming operation into a speciality mushroom business with support from The Transfarmation Project. And they are reportedly thriving. It is difficult to imagine a better demonstration of what agricultural transition can actually look like.

From Pigs to Mushrooms

Iowa is the biggest factory farming state in the US, making the location particularly significant. This is not an abandoned farm being turned into an urban sustainability project hundreds of miles away from animal agriculture. This is a family who spent three decades farming pigs, in the heart of one of America’s most intensive animal farming regions, choosing another way. The farm’s name itself is a reminder of what came before. 1100 Farm refers to the barns that once held 1,100 pigs each. Before the transition, the operation raised approximately 8,000 pigs every year.

Now, one of those large barns has been converted into a space for growing speciality mushrooms.

The farm has also become the second demonstration hub operated through The Transfarmation Project, which works with farmers who want to move away from animal agriculture and towards plant-based farming. The project is run by the nonprofit Mercy For Animals. The site now includes space for research and can host visitors interested in alternatives to factory farming. Changing agriculture requires more than telling farmers what they should stop doing. They need somewhere else to go.

Farmers Are Trapped Too

Factory farming is usually discussed as though the only choice is between defending farmers and defending animals.

That is convenient for the corporations sitting between the two. Tanner Faaborg has spoken about what life as a contract CAFO farmer indebted to a major meat company can do to a person’s mental health. It is worth remembering this when industrial animal agriculture presents itself as the protector of family farming. A system can exploit animals while also trapping the humans working inside it.

Farmers may have buildings specifically designed for confining animals, years of experience in one industry, financial commitments and contracts tying them to companies much larger than themselves. Simply telling them to shut everything down does not solve those problems. Helping them replace animal farming with something economically viable might. The collaboration between the Faaborg family and The Transfarmation Project began in 2021. The launch of the farm as a demonstration hub has been described as at least three years in the making. This was not an overnight transformation.

It was a transition.

Change Does Not Require Perfect People

One of the most interesting parts of the Faaborg story is how ordinary it is. Tanner Faaborg has rejected the idea that his family was somehow naturally destined to abandon pig farming. He described them as neither wealthy nor stereotypical environmentalists. His father worked as a welder for around 40 years. His family had kept pigs for more than 3 decades. His parents were not people who embraced change easily. But they changed.

“If our family can do it, any family can do it,” he said.

That should make people uncomfortable who insist that moving away from animal agriculture is simply unrealistic.

Of course it will not be easy everywhere. Different farms have different land, infrastructure, debts, markets and climates. But “difficult” and “impossible” are not synonyms. Here we have barns built to confine thousands of pigs being used to grow mushrooms instead.

The building did not disappear.

The family did not disappear.

Farming did not disappear.

The animals did.

What Agricultural Transition Could Look Like

The grand opening of the Iowa demonstration hub is scheduled for the 8th August 2026. Its importance extends far beyond one mushroom farm. For decades, debates around animal agriculture have often been framed as a threat: stop farming animals and farmers lose everything. 1100 Farm presents another possibility.

Support farmers to transition. Reuse infrastructure where possible. Develop new markets. Produce food without breeding thousands of animals into confinement and slaughter every year. Most importantly, stop pretending the current system is the only system farmers are capable of operating.

The Faaborg family once raised around 8,000 pigs every year.

Now they grow mushrooms.

If agriculture can change inside a former pig CAFO in Iowa, perhaps the obstacle was never that change was impossible. Perhaps we simply haven’t invested enough in making it possible.