Here are our next 10 notable activities and achievements.

Colinas Farming Company and its employees are grateful for this honor and will continue to strive and maintain an excellent safety program specifically designed for our employees.

The AllWays Safe Agricultural Safety Awards are a collaborative effort between AgSafe and DuPont Crop Protection, who share a commitment in protecting the agricultural industry’s workforce.

You can view photos from our BBQ luncheon at http://www.colinasfarming.com/our-business/agsafe-allways-safe-agricultural-safety-award celebrating this significant award. The luncheon was organized and sponsored by sponsored by AgSafe and DuPont Crop Protection.

26. Employee Benefits

We are very proud to point out how our business stands in terms of providing competitive salary for all supervisors, vineyard workers, managers and office staff. We also are a provider of richer benefits than most agricultural businesses in the state of California.

It is due to our diligence in running this Company, cost containment and control efforts, and our employees’ commitment to hard work that we are still able to run a profitable business, allowing us to provide employees with a rich wage and benefit program.

Colinas Farming Company provides competitive benefits to its regular employees comparison with other California Ag employers as shown below. Report is based on the 2015 Agricultural Wage and Benefit Survey Report conducted by the Farm Employer Labor Services (FELS) of grape producers in Northern California.

27. Carbon Footprint

Since 2008, we have been actively promoting the reduction of the carbon footprint of our organization. We have invited a representative from the Napa County Resource Conservation to discuss environmental issues such as the growing change in climate, due to global warming caused by the fuel we consume.

We provide tips on how to conserve energy and provide handouts to use as a guide. We emphasize the need to decrease car trips! A mid-size car creates 1 ton of carbon emissions every 2,500 miles. 1 ton of carbon released is equal to cutting down and burning a tree that was one foot in diameter and 40 feet tall!

To further our efforts in contributing to a reduced Carbon footprint, we send out info on our monthly local hardware store trips as a reminder to combine trips, make lists and consider delivery of items.

We are proud to report that over the years, we have decreased our average days we drive to our local hardware store from 11.2 days per month in 2009 to 8.75 days in 2014. In addition, we reduced our trips per day from a high of 3 to 4 trips per day to only 1.

To measure your own carbon footprint, visit http://www.coolcalifornia.org/article/tools.

28. Exceptional Wines from Vineyard Ranches managed

Click on this link for some of these wines which we are very proud to know that it came from grapes we have grown.

29. Sharing Information to Future Agriculturists – helped some students in their field of study

In December 2011, Colinas Farming Company was contacted by Jason Lu, a University of San Francisco student studying sustainability. He performed a Google search and found our company website. He researched many small to medium size agriculture companies before picking our company. What made him choose our company was the amount of corporate social responsibility work our company did that helped the environment. Per Jason, our practices really stood out among all the companies he came across when he visited and learned about the companies through their websites.

His school work involved researching different companies and coming up with one company that he decided was the best to use and reference for his corporate social responsibility project. It is not an ongoing project. It was only information to help his classmates learn more about different companies.

Jason’s project was to advertise the corporate social responsibility that Colinas Farming Company is practicing and for him to give a one minute presentation. The class seemed very interested in the effort our company was making. In fact, a couple of students in his class are considering extending the project to do more research on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) Colinas Farming Company is currently practicing.

30. Providing Access to Research– helped some students to access vineyard on their field of study

Below are links to maps of bird boxes located on vineyard ranches managed by Colinas Farming Company. The information was researched and provided to us by Carrie Wendt and Xeronimo Castaneda, students of Humboldt University.

The mapping is part of Carrie’s Master’s thesis at Humboldt State University, where she is studying Wildlife Ecology. I Carrie have worked on the project for the last two years, and it is expected to be completed this summer.

Carrie explained, “The overall project was examining the habitat that barn owls prefer to nest in with the goal of increasing nest box occupancy. To accomplish this, I monitored the occupancy and success of 297 nest boxes during the 2015 breeding season in Napa Valley, then analyzed the nest box and habitat characteristics at 3 spatial scales.”