Climate smart agriculture metrics and challenges for agroecology in Norway and Costa Rica

Abstract Frictions arise when technocratic approaches to the climate crisis are sought implemented in local places in the Global North and South. This article unpacks the context-specific tensions that unfold when climate smart agriculture (CSA) and its underpinning logic of calculable metrics is promoted by key agricultural actors following national policies of carbon neutrality in Norway and Costa Rica. More specifically, the article focuses on the divergence between CSA and farmers who seek to regenerate soils by practicing alternative approaches that draw on agroecology. Ethnographic fieldwork among farmers of different productions and sites in Norway and Costa Rica reveals that the alternative approaches emerging in some regions do not conform to CSA metrics despite farmers’ exposure to CSA. By implication CSA risks rendering illegitimate alternative approaches that have potential to restore soils and ecosystems and empower farmers economically, socially and epistemologically. The article calls for policy makers to move with urgent patience in their aspiration to mitigate contemporary climate and environmental crises.