Climate Smart Agriculture Team

CSA (Climate Smart Agriculture) is “an approach that calls for the integration of adaptation and the possibility of mitigation in agricultural growth strategies to support food security."

CSA aims to tackle three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to  climate change ; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible (FAO, 2020).

Climate Smart Agriculture addresses the risks that climate change poses to agriculture. It encompasses management practices that:

• Increase soil carbon
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• Improve on-farm efficiencies
• Promote sustainable land practices

CSA promotes increasing agricultural productivity, building resiliency to climate change, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (California Institute for Water Resources, 2020)

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) team is a group of 10 Community Education Specialists (CES) hired by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) in partnership with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). The memorandum of agreement was signed on the  26th of October 2018  by  Karen Ross  (Secretary of CDFA) and  Glenda Humiston  (Vice President for UCANR).

The agreement was for the specialists to work on three of the CDFA CSA programs available. These programs are designed to incentivize California farmers and ranchers to;

• Reducing water use (SWEEP)
• Promoting healthy soils and sequestering carbon (HSP)
• Implementing non-digester manure management practices (AMMP)

UC ANR CSA team do a range of activities including outreach, grant application and field day demonstrations to growers on CSA practices. Some of the activities they do are listed below;