Crops

What Is Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA)?

Published:

August 9, 2024

Key Takeaways:

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a set of technologies and practices designed to enhance food production under global warming and address agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Key benefits of CSA include improved profitability, more resilient crops, and increased pest resistance.
CSA practices help conserve soil and water while introducing more climate-resilient crops. Smart technologies can move agricultural management online, allowing big data to guide every decision.
There are economic and regulatory barriers to CSA production, so government-run educational programs are crucial.

Agriculture and forestry are responsible for 24% of global greenhouse gasses. In turn, global warming raises the risk of floods, drought, and crop damage, influencing agriculture. For example, temperature events cause more than US $1 billion in heat-related agricultural loss annually. The world needs viable solutions, and it’s crucial that the industry becomes more sustainable on a global scale.

Today, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is up to the challenge. It offers a collection of sustainable farming practices and technologies to address food insecurity while adjusting to climate change challenges.

What Is Climate-Smart Agriculture?

CSA was developed in response to climate change but its effects are being felt in every sphere of agricultural life. It has three core goals: to enhance crop and livestock production, adapt to the effects of global warming, and mitigate further greenhouse gas damage. However, its benefits go far beyond these objectives.

CSA practices have the power to enhance profits, reduce waste, and allow farmers to improve on monocropped systems through rotation. They can also preserve soil and introduce crops that are more resilient to pests.

CSA has grown to incorporate hundreds of technologies and best practices, each with its own unique set of benefits. The most common ones include:

Soil water management: precision irrigation and rainwater collection.
No-till cultivation: planting without inverting the soil.
Mitigating greenhouse gas release from farming.
Crop performance management: optimizing resource usage and soil carbon absorption.
Data collection technologies: gathering information on weather, growth rates, and pests without time-intensive field scouting due to devices like Cropler’s agri-camera.

The Benefits of Climate-Smart Agriculture

Climate-smart farming has moved into the digital sphere. Analytics and online sharing have given it new superpowers. Climate-smart technologies create contemporary agriculture, helping farmers to identify destructive weather effects, pests, and weeds the moment they arise.

High-tech virtual scouting can help optimize fertilizer applications with the utmost precision and enhance communication with agri-workers. For example, you can use Cropler’s portable agri-cameras connected to a web platform with both the data from the fields and a comments section. With these solutions, you are always aware of multiple parameters, from dewfall and plant growth to humidity and crop diseases. With all the time you save on scouting, you can make informed decisions and respond to crises promptly instead of fixing more damage afterward.

Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices

The scientific community has been working overtime to address the farming challenges. Several practices proved to be helpful:

Conservation agriculture. These practices include no-tillage practices, soil cover maintenance, and plant diversification. They help conserve arable land and regenerate degraded soil.
Climate-resilient crops. Not all crops are robust enough to survive weather extremes. Cultivating climate-resilient crop varieties allows them to resist climate-driven stress as well as soil-associated challenges. Genome-edited species are engineered with their own natural herbicides and toxicity to pests. The modern crop becomes less vulnerable to a changing climate and an over-stressed ecosystem.
Agroforestry. This polyculture system integrates animal farming systems, trees, and shrubs into timber and wood farming. It improves productivity, reduces soil erosion, and gives local wildlife a usable habitat. Climate-smart agricultural technologies with phenophase tracking can support this process by providing a continuous stream of data.Soil and water management.
Soil and water management systems like drop irritation and water harvesting have been in use for thousands of years. Combined with irrigation scheduling and drought-resistant crops, they can enhance economic stability and mitigate drought risk. Dry sustainable agriculture is a core strategy that relies on soil-stored water from previous rains.
Integrated pest management (IPM). This eco-sensitive approach to pests relies on environmental observations more than on chemical solutions. It allows farmers to be more selective about pesticide use, helping to identify pests more precisely, analyze their lifecycle, and implement more preventative strategies.
Nutrient management. This method optimizes crop nutrient usage by balancing the soil. Hydraulics and cultural irrigation can conserve the nutrients a crop needs to thrive.
Livestock management. Livestock produces almost 15% of greenhouse gas emissions, so climate-smart livestock management improves diets, develops manure management systems, and improves grassland management.

Challenges in Adopting Climate-Smart Agriculture

Climate-smart agricultural practices don’t always come affordably or easily. Studies show that farmers’ CSA knowledge is high, but socioeconomic factors can act as a barrier to fully adopting these strategies and processes. When high input costs merge with low investment interest, it becomes increasingly difficult to access cutting-edge solutions. Limited awareness of various modern technologies is another hard barrier to break.

Providing incentives, educating farmers, and removing the barriers to intelligent agriculture can help make this industry more sustainable and more profitable at the same time. States like California are addressing the challenge through extension education programs, but farmers also need enough funds to cover their implementation costs. On a macro scale, lack of coordination between industries presents its own challenge.

When you have questions, we'll help you find the answers you need to take control of your fields and the harvest you care about. Contact Cropler to discover more about our products and the ways we help you proactively protect your operations from the effects of crop diseases. Discover more

Cropler Is Your First Guide to CSA

Climate-smart agriculture can slow the rate of climate change and push agriculture into a more intelligent era, all while addressing food insecurity. With
Cropler’s solutions, you can try a modern approach to scouting that helps to not only save your time but also reduce fuel use and optimize the amount of fertilizers. Install light and portable yet extremely helpful agri-cameras in your field and set up their connection with a web platform. This will provide you with 24/7 access to real-time photos from your fields, allowing you to monitor their health and identify the key phenophases to improve planning.