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iming to help reduce negative impacts of climate change as well as to improve the life of smallholder farmers in drought-prone areas, the government and the House of Representatives pledged on Tuesday to enhance the use of conservation farming in cultivation areas across the country.

Conservation agriculture projects organized by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) have proven to be successful in improving farmers’ livelihood and resilience of farming systems amid negative impacts of climate change.

“Based on the positive result of this project, we hope that conservation farming can be adopted and expanded massively in Indonesia. We need a reliable strategy and mechanism to ensure the technology is used by farmers as it could increase their income,” said Muhammad Syakir, the director general of Agriculture Ministry’s research and development agency (Balitbang).

Conservation farming revolves around three pillars: light soil cultivation, permanent soil cover and intercropping between legume and non-legume plants, which can form a symbiotic relationship with rhizobium, a microorganism that fixes nitrogen, essential for soil’s fertility.

Having managed its implementation in the two provinces since 2013, the FAO focuses on using conservation farming for corn, which is a premier commodity in the two regions.

One of its surveys showed that farmers using this system yield 77 percent higher, compared to conventional farming practices, such as the slash and burn system.

FAO data also revealed that in Malaka regency in NTT, which suffered from El Niño conditions in 2015 and 2016, about 57 percent of farmers, who implemented traditional farming, said their corn growth was not satisfactory and harvest failures were common. That compares to only 15 percent crop failure reported by farmers using conservation farming.

The Ministry’s center for agricultural technology assessment and development (BBP2TP) director Haris Syahbudin said the widespread use of conservation farming will bode well for the country’s commitment from the COP21 climate talks in Paris last year to limiting a global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

Haris said that conservation farming could be best implemented in other drought prone areas in the country, such as Sumatra, the eastern part of Sulawesi and the southern part of Kalimantan. “Drought-prone lands are estimated to cover approximately 40 million hectares across the country,” Haris said.

Separately, Herman Khaeron, a member of House Commission IV overseeing agriculture, said that lawmakers would support the idea of implementing conservation farming in the country by creating a legal umbrella for its enhancement in the future.

Herman said that the House had included two agriculture related bills in its 2017 National Legislation Program: a revision of the 1992 Cultivation System Law bill and the 1990 Natural Resources Conservation and Ecosystem Law bill. “The government’s pledge [to promote conservation farming] matches our aim for the bills.”

Separately, FAO representative in Indonesia Mark Smulders said evidence suggesting the best practice of conservation farming could be found in NTB and NTT and that it should be linked with a policy.