As a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, Tanner Faaborg is all too aware that agricultural traditions are hard to shake. So when he set in motion plans to change his family's farm from a livestock operation housing more than 8,000 pigs each year to one that grows lion's mane and oyster mushrooms, he knew some of his peers might laugh at him. He just did not necessarily expect his brother to be chief among them.
"My older brother has worked with pigs his entire adult life, managing about 70,000 of them across five counties," Faaborg says. "But we got to a point where he went from laughing at me to saying: well, I guess maybe I'll quit my job and help you out."
"Now he's the most dedicated," says Katherine Jernigan, director of the Transfarmation Project at Mercy for Animals, a non-profit that helped the Faaborgs make the switch and set up their new business, 1100 Farm. "He's the most in tune with which mushrooms are growing well."
Read more at The Guardian
