Why this is important to Wisconsin businesses: The Cauca region in the country's southwest is developing a "climate-smart village" program that focuses on adjusting agricultural practices with environmental protection and climate change in mind.

Colombia’s main exports come from its vast fertile land, producing everything from coffee and sugarcane to bananas, cocoa and rice. Cauca, a region in the southwest of Colombia, is developing smart farming practices to ensure farming on the land will be both sustainable and resilient to future challenges.

According to CGIAR, a “global agricultural innovation network” that’s received funding from organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, farmers face a number of issues, with climate change being the worst threat—affecting crop productivity, causing soil degradation, hampering access to water and hitting larger rural farms the most severely.

Ana María Loboguerrero, head of global policy research at the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, is involved in the Cauca Climate-Smart Village Project, which helps farmers implement practices and technologies that increase productivity and food security, helping them adapt to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By collecting information from a low-cost weather station, farmers can better predict weather conditions such as precipitation temperature and humidity three months in advance. Loboguerrero says these “agro-climatic forecasts” help the farmers make better decisions in terms of when to plant, which varieties to use and when to apply fertilizer. In terms of smart farming, 30 Climate-Smart Villages have been created in 19 countries around the world, indicating a growing market opportunity in Colombia and beyond in helping farmers to work with the climate.