What Is Climate Smart Agriculture?

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July 12, 2024

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by Olivia Messerges and Trent Ford (farmdoc daily) As the United States agricultural system faces the challenges of feeding a growing population, adapting to climate change, and reducing environmental consequences, the concept of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) was established as a comprehensive strategy to help address these issues. However, no standardized framework exists to assess if CSA practices produce the desired benefits. This article calls for developing a consistent, widely applicable, and standardized framework to assess what makes a specific agricultural system or practice “climate-smart” and analyzes agroforestry and prescribed grazing within said framework.

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Therefore, a heightened focus on sustainable agriculture systems is necessary to guarantee food security, improve environmental health, and respond to climate change; the concept of CSA intends to contribute to addressing this ultimate challenge.

Agricultural systems and practices referred to as CSA are assumed to address at least two of the interconnected challenges of feeding a growing population, adapting to climate change, and reducing environmental harm (The World Bank, 2024).

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Many organizations have broadly defined CSA, including the World Bank, the FAO, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). These definitions are connected by the central tenets of (1) increasing agricultural productivity, (2) enhancing agricultural resilience, and (3) reducing GhG emissions (The World Bank, 2024; FAO, 2024; USDA Northeast Climate Hub, n.d.).

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A standardized framework would also enable producers, policymakers, and researchers to consistently compare the effectiveness, tradeoffs, and implementation barriers of various CSA systems and practices.

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Agroforestry Discussion

When analyzing agroforestry systems and its five practices (alley cropping, riparian forest buffers, silvopasture, windbreaks, and forest farming) through the three-pillar CSA framework, strong scientific evidence supports that the system increases productivity, enhances adaptation, and reduces emissions (USDA National Agroforestry Center, n.d.a).

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By using the unique advantages of each agroforestry practice and addressing their respective limitations, stakeholders can collaborate toward building resilient and sustainable agricultural systems that proactively address climate change, while enhancing productivity and environmental stewardship.

Prescribed Grazing Discussion

The three-pillar framework is also applied to prescribed grazing, where livestock from several herds are combined and rotated among different pastures to provide a “rest period for the pastures when the cattle are in a different pasture” (USDA NRCS, n.d.a).

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Overall, prescribed grazing has the potential to reduce environmental impacts from the livestock sector, but the scientific literature does not adequately support the assumptions of prescribed grazing management objectives as CSA.

Conclusion

CSA is a promising paradigm for addressing environmental challenges by increasing productivity, enhancing resilience, and reducing emissions. However, the definition and assessment of CSA practices lack standardization, hindering their widespread adoption and effective implementation. Developing a standardized CSA framework for assessing systems and practices is crucial for evaluating their effectiveness, comparing different approaches, and guiding decision-making processes and resource allocation. The Growing Climate Solutions Act (GCSA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) gives the USDA some authority to govern the CSA framework; however further development is needed to create a common criterion for stakeholders to assess the climate-smart attributes of agricultural systems and practices (GCSA, 2021; IRA 2022).

By applying the consistent three-pillar framework, we can better understand the potential of CSA practices in addressing climate change and promoting sustainable agriculture. Our initial assessment revealed that a significant body of scientific research supports that agroforestry accomplishes many of the CSA goals when properly implemented and managed; however, the benefits of prescribed grazing lack scientific consensus and require further research. It is important to note that for both agroforestry and prescribed grazing, the effectiveness of the systems is dependent on site-specific conditions and management. READ MORE

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