What is Climate Smart Agriculture? : A Standardized Framework for Assessing the Effectiveness of Climate Smart Agriculture Systems and Practices

The United States agricultural system is challenged with feeding a growing population, adapting to climate change, and minimizing environmental damage. In response to these challenges, the paradigm of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) was developed to describe practices that address these challenges as a comprehensive strategy to address climate change and increase food security. Definitions of CSA vary, but surround three main pillars: increasing productivity, enhancing adaptation, and reducing emissions. However, no standardized framework exists to assess if practices or technologies identified as "climate-smart" produce the desired benefits. A standardized framework would enable producers, policymakers, and researchers to improve CSA implementation, policy development, and decision-making processes. This paper aims to develop a standardized framework to assess what makes a specific agricultural system or practice "climate-smart." The objective is to create a consistent and widely applicable framework for determining the "climate-smartness" of an agricultural system or practice. We apply this framework and complete a comprehensive analysis through the lens of the three-pillar CSA framework to two systems identified as “climate-smart”: agroforestry and prescribed grazing. We recommend the continued development of this framework as a model for the USDA, producers, and researchers to assess agricultural systems, practices, and technologies to determine if they qualify as "climate-smart."