The ethiopiancapitol.com had this to say about the Dry Farming Initiatives:
Dry farming to reap first harvest
By Muluken Yewondwossen
A ‘dry farming’ investment in West Arsi Zone, Arsi Negele Woreda, is to collect its first harvest in February after the project is officially inaugurated on January 31.
During the low-moisture farming pilot project, eight kinds of seeds were planted on 12.5 hectare of land by the US based Al-Morrel Development in collaboration with Village of Hope. In the next two wet and dry harvest seasons the farm will expand to 2,000 hectares of land. The pilot project was implemented at a cost of three million birr and has allocated 50 million birr for the next five years where they plan to add vegetable dry farming and dairy opertions.
Dry farming produces agricultural products without irrigation in a climate with a moisture deficiency, usually places with an annual rainfall of less than 20 inches. It involves raising drought-resistant or drought-evasive crops (that is, crops that mature in late spring or fall) and makes the best use of a limited water supply by maintaining good surface conditions—loosening the soil so that water may enter easily and weeding so that the moisture is better utilized.
Paul A. Morrell, President of Al-Morrell Development, told Capital that they started with seven different hybrid crops including wheat, barley and one selected local seed, cheek bean.
“I am from Utah, in the western part of the US, which is a dry area and we have to plant and harvest so the seeds germinate without the wet season,” said Morrell. “This system has been practiced for more than 40 years in the western part of the US after being introduced in the universities.”
According to Morrell, Ethiopian farmers rest land and oxen during the dry season when, using dry farming techniques, they could reap bountiful harvests.
Gebremichael Habte, an agronomist in USAID, told Capital that two season harvesting in Ethiopia has great potential to improve farmer livelihood, increase exports and decrease inflationary pressures.
“When we came here and explained the project for the first time, nobody accepted it. But after the implementation process in October, they began seeing its potential,” Morrell said. “In the US wet season we produce 9,000 pounds while dry farming yields 6,000 pounds per hectare. But that will increase in Ethiopia since the country’s climate and soil is more suitable for dry farming,” added Morrel.
Al Morrell Development is involved in real estate development, hotel service, software and military logistic businesses.
In the US, dry-farming techniques evolved through experiments conducted more or less independently where settlements were established in locations with little precipitation. During the early part of the 1850s, for example, Americans in California began to raise crops such as winter wheat, whose principal growing season coincided with the winter rainfall season.
By 1863, settlers in Utah extensively and successfully practiced dry farming techniques. In some interior valleys of the Pacific Northwest dry farming was reported before 1880.
http://www.capitalethiopia.com/archive/2009/January/week3/local_news.htm#16
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Also in the news was this article from the Ethiopian Reporter:
Dry farm set to launch
By Kaleyesus Bekele
An American philanthropist, Paul Morrel, in collaboration with a local NGO, Village Ethiopia, is set to launch a dry farm – a farm employing a farming method whereby farmers in low-rainfall areas preserve moisture during the rainy season and use it to grow crops in the dry season – in the Oromia Regional State, near Kuyera town on Januray 31.
At a press conference held on Thursday at the Addis Ababa Hilton, Paul Morrel, a retired businessman, disclosed that the dry farm pilot project has proven to be successful. Last year, Morrel hired an American agronomist, Evan Max Field, and studied the climate in the Shashemene locality for six month. After that they rented nine hectares of land in Kerssa Illalla kebele in the Western Arsi zone. They imported select seeds of barley, wheat, and sunflower which produce bumper harvest from the United Sates and planted them on the land in October 2008.
“We hired local farmers who work on the farm. We grew the crops with no rain and no irrigation. We did not use any chemical,” Morrel told reporters. “We want to show Ethiopia that it can produce food crops without rain water and irrigation. Other NGOs, the government of Ethiopia and associations could emulate our projects,” he added.
Morrel and Max Field expect to harvest on average 22 quintals per hectare. They have spent three million birr on the farm. Morrel says that they have plans to expand the farm to 7000 hectares during the next dry season.
http://en.ethiopianreporter.com/content/view/582/26/