Until the Conference of the Parties (COP) of Durban in 2011, agricultural issues were almost absent from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted in 1992. The agricultural sector seemed over-politicized and controversial. However, in the late 2000s, a window of opportunity seemed to open in favor of the inclusion of agricultural issues on the climate agenda. Three so-called 'scientific' concepts have emerged in climate agenda-setting: 'climate-smart agriculture', 'agroecology' and 'nature-based solutions'. The production and use of scientific knowledge are widely recognized as essential elements in environmental and climate standards-setting. The three studied concepts are therefore closely intertwined with the 'climatization' of agricultural policies. These three concepts frame agricultural adaptation and mitigation issues with regard to climate change (CC) in specific ways. The first two concepts (climate-smart agriculture and nature-based solutions) are recent, while the third (agroecology) is a long-standing term that has recently regained popularity within the climate research community. These three concepts also contribute to reviving controversy permeating agricultural debates. The present article addresses the four following questions: What are the roles of these three scientific concepts in the emergence of agricultural issues in global climate agenda-setting? What visions of agricultural and climate issues do they support? Which actors promote them and for what reasons? How can the scientific and political progressions of these concepts be analysed? In analyzing the policy window of opportunity for placing agricultural issues on the climate agenda, and then the origins of the three concepts, their scientific and political progressions, we hypothesize that these three concepts are promoted by three distinct—and sometimes diametrically opposed—epistemic communities (Haas, 1992). We highlight the strategic politization of som