Climate-Smart Agriculture in USAID Office of Food for Peace Funded Programs

As climate change progresses, its potential effects on food security become progressively clear. In response, food security programs are increasingly looking to climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a way to address the twin challenges of food security and climate change. As part of the learning around program implementation, The TOPS Program commissioned a study to assess the awareness, interpretation and implementation of CSA in Food for Peace (FFP) programs. This report briefly reviews what CSA is and why it matters for development food assistance programs, discusses findings from the study, then provides suggestions going forward based on those findings. The goal is not to define CSA, but to provide insights into how to support its operationalization at the field level. The primary audience is individuals working in existing or new FFP programs and those that support them, but the findings are also useful for the wider food security implementing community.