California’s farm families are really good at innovating to solve problems. I am proud to be a part of it.
I was born in the Central Valley and raised by immigrant parents. My work started when I was just a child helping my father, a farm manager, with odd jobs on the farm where he worked and where my family lived. Today, I am a farm manager at Bar 20 Dairy in Fresno County, where I have worked for the past 16 years.
In my career, I have seen a lot of progress made to farm more sustainably. California dairy farms are producing more milk with fewer cows, producing less greenhouse gases and using less water, fewer fossil fuels, less pesticides and commercial fertilizers.
You can see this innovation at our farm, which has been nationally and internationally recognized for leadership in sustainability. We’ve electrified our farm equipment, installed solar, use wearable monitoring devices for tracking cow health and so much more.
An important way Bar 20 Dairy has been able to make a difference for the environment and community has been the addition of a digester. It allows our farm to capture methane emissions and produce renewable, combustion-free electricity using fuel cells. A portion of the biogas is also being used to produce 100% renewable hydrogen that will soon be fueling local transit buses.