Although agriculture surprisingly remains outside climate negotiations and agreements, FAO has been suggesting and promoting the “climate-smart agriculture” (CSA) concept since 2009. Based on the concerns of agricultural institutions, this concept generates serious political debates. Just as many other concepts emerging at the boundaries of the political and scientific arenas, it questions epistemic frontiers and patterns. Policy makers look for evidences, concrete answers to their questions, solutions to their problems and guarantees to make their commitments... whereas thinking in this field is so little stabilized and the universe so uncertain. Diverse solicitations from the political arena, emerging behaviors and critics from numerous stakeholders towards CSA have induced scientists to organize global science conferences. Refusing the dogma pitfall and the normative definition of what should or should not be labelled “smart”, and insisting on the importance of critical posture, the author highlights the challenge of not giving in to the temptation of an extreme volatility of concepts, but rather of making CSA a relevant and operational framework to analyze and interpret interactions between agriculture and climate.