For four generations, the Fernandes family has been milking cows in Tulare County, California. Now, the five Fernandes brothers are striving to make their dairies more sustainable, helping transform what their great grandfather started in the early 20th century to help fight against climate change.

Frank Fernandes first established the Fernandes family dairy in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1920s. Over 100 years later, five of his great grandchildren run five dairies in the same area. Greg, Gary, Frank, Jared, and Josh Fernandes manage Fern Oaks, Legacy Ranch, LegenDairy Farms East and West, and Sousa & Sousa (also known as Legacy Holsteins). Each dairy is equipped with covered lagoon anaerobic digesters, built by Maas Energy Works and funded through the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Dairy Digester Research and Development Program (DDRDP), part of California Climate Investments (CCI). These covered lagoons, also known as anaerobic digesters, harness the natural breakdown of dairy manure to generate renewable energy from methane, in the form of electricity, renewable natural gas (RNG), and hydrogen, among others.

In total, the projects received more than $5.3 million in state grants, with matching funds of $8.9 million. This funding helped offset the high upfront costs of adopting methane-reduction technology. The five dairies installed a variety of manure management upgrades, depending on their individual needs. Some installed filtering methods to separate solid manure from liquid manure and remove sand from manure. These changes allow farmers to collect solid manure for composting instead of storing them in pools, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making use of the nutrients in those manure solids for other purposes. Removing sand helps to increase the efficiency of manure management and reduce the wear on manure processing equipment. These upgrades also accelerated the dairies’ adoption of low-emission technology and increased the supply of renewable transportation fuels.

All five Fernandes family dairies connect to the Calgren Dairy Fuels (CDF) pipeline cluster, California’s first full-scale dairy biogas network. The methane captured at the dairies is cleaned and upgraded to renewable natural gas (RNG), which is then injected into the SoCalGas system or used as transportation fuel to replace diesel in heavy-duty trucks. CDF’s operations team maintains around-the-clock oversight of the digester and pipeline system, ensuring reliable RNG production. Over the next decade, these family-operated digesters are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of over 550,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, improving the local air and water quality, supporting about 140 jobs in Tulare County, and strengthening the local agricultural economy.