You take your best shot, and if it’s a miss, you’ve got to be ready for the rebound.
With grit and discernment, Mark Hanna is the leader of Hanna Farms, a row crop farm in north-central Iowa. What sets him apart is how he is always ready to make a decision and shoot his shot. And he’s carrying the mentality of being on his toes and ready for what’s next.
For his success in managing the farm business, Mark Hanna was named a 2025 Top Producer of the Year Finalist, which is sponsored by BASF, Fendt and Rabo Agrifinance.
The Hanna Farms’ playbook is one of fundamentals, strategy and creativity.
The Fundamentals
On his team is his wife, Belinda, whom he has farmed with for more than 46 years, and their two sons, Andrew and Philip. They keep things fair by keeping things equal in the operation. Split three ways, the father and two sons own and operate the family enterprise.
“Put simply, farming is in my blood,” he says.
Hanna tells the story of his grandfather, Dewey, who at the age of 13 with a sixth-grade education took the reins of the farm alongside his widowed mother in 1921.
“With six siblings at home, it was a big undertaking,” Hanna says. “Before the ’29 crash, it was common to go in once or twice a year and pay off the bank note. That year, they went to the bank a month earlier, because they had the money for the payment. Then the bank closed. If they wouldn’t have done that, they would have lost their farm.”
With that serendipitous event, generational lessons of making payments, staying current and not taking anything for granted were set like stone.
“When he sold me his farm, I was 23 years old. He was adamant I would make it because he said he knew I’d do everything I could,” Hanna says.
That was tested in real-time, as the year after purchasing the farm, the value was cut in half. Hanna’s challenge was to have the business survive the 1980s farm crisis with 18% interest on operating notes.
“I concentrated on raising as many hogs in every building I had. And it worked; I made it through the ‘80s on the ‘mortgage lifters’ — hogs,” he says.
Related: How Iowa Farmer Mark Hanna is Investing in Innovation and Giving Ag Startups a Fighting Chance
Diversification of revenues has always been part of the farm’s strategy. Hog production was a financial stabilizer for Hanna Farms.
However, when the hog market crashed in 1998, the enterprise was losing up to $30,000 a month on 8¢ per pound hogs.
Desperate to do something to offset the farm’s losses, Hanna went to work the night shift at a local door factory. After doing farm chores in the day, he’d work at the factory from 3:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. But after only being able to talk to his sons for 10 minutes during his 8 p.m. break for two weeks, Hanna decided to quit the factory job, return to farm, and find some way to put the farm back in the black. For him, the scales tipped more toward family than just the farm.
“My dad would have said, ‘This too shall pass,’” he says. “And it did. By June 1999 we had 60¢ per pound hogs. My buildings were full.”
Get Creative
For generations the farm’s leaders have recognized challenges in the business. And in 1998, Mark’s father, Richard, decided to do something just a bit different than before.
With $1.50 corn, he and other farmers and agribusinessmen started Ag Ventures Alliance, which was a group of 1,300 farmers who assembled their investments to build new revenue opportunities with the goal of becoming price makers — not takers. The first investment was in Golden Oval Eggs followed by MGP Ethanol Plant. After five years, they created 40 million bushels of corn demand in north central Iowa.
Richard then passed his board seat to Mark in 2003.
“Dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was unable to talk from his illness, but he wanted me to keep his vision going,” he says.
It was a new title for Mark as he went from a player in the game to more of coaching role.
“Today, we are still adding value to agriculture by helping ag startups with business development and funding,” he says. “For the last six years, I’ve been on the farmer selection committee interviewing and selecting the startups from a pool of up to 60 to just the top 10,” he says.
Hanna also participates by giving founders mentorship, field trial opportunities and other straight-from-the-farm business insights. And he’s supported some of the companies with his own checkbook having just bought a prototype Grain Weevil robot for cleaning out grain bins.
“This experience with the startups has given me a lot,” he says. “In fact, I may have gotten more than even the startups. It’s helped push me to be more on the forefront of technologies and stretch beyond just status quo of how to do things.”
Two years ago, Ag Ventures Alliance joined with Ag Launch to create Ag Launch Farmers LLC, wherein farmers are able to take early equity shares in the startup companies they help support.
Play Smart
As with his fields and his farm’s balance sheet, Hanna has been willing to proactively find better ways to win.
“Making no money is breakeven. Selling under the cost of production is hard on cash flow and working capital, and we have way more variables on what controls ups and downs in our markets than ever before,” he says. “It’s what keeps you up at night.”
Seven years ago, Hanna surveyed how their operation was setup. In the spring, they ran two 16-row planters and two four-wheel-drive tractors with 100' of cultivators. Between machine operators and tendering, it took five people to get the work done.
“A neighbor put on a clinic of how they converted to no-till and strip-till, and I was intrigued by the transformation. Now I can say technology and environmental adaptation are a joint innovation on our farm,” he says.
Today, the farm uses strip-till, no-till and cover crops. One planter follows the fall-applied fertilizer, which requires two people between planting and tendering. Two other team members are out running the sprayer and tendering for preemergence herbicide, which used to be hired out.
The conversion cut labor by 20%, and it cut fertilizer rates overall by 20%. Additional benefits have been fuel savings and a bit of assurance against weather adversity.
“Now, when we get the gully washers, we have peace of mind,” Hanna says.
Pass the Ball
Taking the generational lessons in his family and applying his own experience as a leader and mentor, Hanna reflects on a return for all the ways he’s invested in the farm.
“Farming is an occupation of risks and rewards, and looking back to today farming with my sons, all I see is rewards. It’s a father’s dream,” he says.
Through the 1990s and 2000s Hanna was able to add more land for the row crop part of the farm, and then when his sons started wanting to return, the nearly full transition to row crop farming was well underway.
As Hanna’s father’s Parkinson’s disease continued to progress, he had a medically forced retirement.
“My older son, Andrew, rented 300 acres when dad quit,” Hanna says. “Philip also joined the business and took over the hog operation. And we were just so happy to have both of our sons want to continue the family farm.”
The Future
“When my father died in 2010, it had to make us think about the planning for when you’re going to retire,” he says. “I talk about it with my boys all the time. That’s how I’m trying to look at my transition and focus — the long term, the next 10 years. How are we going to leave it and transfer it? There doesn’t have to be stress involved.”
Currently, Hanna is a one-third partner in the farm. He’s transitioned the purchasing decisions on inputs and the production choices for field work to Andrew and Philip.
“I ask them, ‘What do you want me to do today? Drive a truck? Tender someone with a sprayer? And if you don’t have something for me to do, I’ll do something I want to do,’” he says. “I’m hoping to transition out of the operation in three years, but I think they’ll still want me to hang around.”
