The Conservation Technology Information Center, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and Houston Engineering, is leading development of a new online tool, the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Connector, as a key element of a new project selected in September 2022 for funding by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program.

 

The overall project is being led by the Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, which was awarded up to $35 million by USDA to conduct this new partnership pilot. Through their global collaborative, Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management (OpenTEAM), Wolfe’s Neck Center will lead an alliance of over 60 national and regional buyers, funders, and organizations to launch and support climate-smart agricultural pilot projects on farms and ranches in the Northeast, Mountain West, and California.

 

The CSA Connector™ is an app being developed by CTIC and its partners to play a key role in the program by connecting all of the relevant participants in the emerging climate smart commodity marketplace—buyers, producers, technical service providers, and certifiers–with each other and with the information needed to support transactions among them. Using the innovative OpenTEAM work environment, participants will have easy access to a wide range of resources, including environmental claims registries, calibration data sets, and other information libraries.  OpenTEAM emphasizes integrability, interoperability, full transparency and accountability.

 

There are potential opportunities for the CSA Connector to contribute to the other pilot partnership projects just selected for funding by USDA. USDA is encouraging collaboration among the various pilots, and the CTIC-led team looks forward to doing its part. If interested in learning more about such collaboration opportunities, please contact Dave Gustafson (gustafson@ctic.org).