As countries around the world face urgent agricultural challenges, the concept of ‘climate-smart’ agriculture (CSA) has been put forward to synergistically achieve climate change adaptation, mitigation, and food security. This paper explores how three countries are using integrated policy approaches to CSA. Brazil invested in research to support sustainable intensification while creating legal and enforcement mechanisms to protect forest areas as a response to unrestrained agricultural expansion driven by market demand. Ethiopia partnered with international institutions to create innovative participatory watershed development programs as a way to help smallholder farmers working marginal land to break out of a poverty cycle. New Zealand weaned itself from agricultural subsidies while partnering on R&D with the private sector as a way to embed adaptation in an agricultural sector threatened by climate change and international trade dynamics. Governments are encouraged to put greater emphasis on changing policies that impose disincentives for CSA adoption than on introducing new incentives or prohibitions that counteract negative policy signals. Integrated national policy approaches will be aided by clear, consistent signals from multilateral agencies, global donors, and international conventions and trade agreements that promote agriculture as a central part of the solution for climate change, unsustainable resource use, and food insecurity.