The Raya valley in Tigray, where Alamata Woreda is located, has suitable climate and rich water resources, among others, to grow various tropical fruits. Development of fruits only started a few years ago (1996) with the Raya Valley Development Project and the OoARD (Office of Agriculture and Rural Development), mostly focusing on papaya. A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) study conducted by the Woreda stakeholders identified tropical fruits as a potential marketable commodity in 2005.

Bure district has a diverse ago-ecology, different soil types, a relatively long rainy season and a number of rivers and streams for irrigation. Therefore, it has suitable tract of land to grow temperate, subtropical and tropical fruit crops. In 2007, fruits were identified as a potential marketable commodity by the stakeholders participating in the IPMS project. They diagnosed that farmers had limited orchard management knowledge and skill and were growing locally available less productive and low quality fruit varieties.

Ethiopia has a diverse agro-ecology and sufficient surface and ground water resources, suitable for growing various temperate and tropical fruits. Although various tropical and temperate fruits are grown in the lowland/midland and highland agro-ecologies, the area coverage is very limited. For example, banana export increased from less than 5,000 tons in 1961 to 60,000 tons in 1972, but in 2003 declined to about 1,300 tons worth less than USD 350,000.

With irrigated vegetables development, interventions on the uses of improved inputs such as water lifting devices; varieties; on-farm water, nutrient and pest management, and access to credit and market information were introduced in Atsbi-Womberta district, Ethiopia. Besides, skill and uptake capacity of vegetable growers, extension service providers and vegetable traders were improved accordingly.

This paper shared lessons learnt from the project of Improving Productivity and Market Success in forage development approaches, scaling up strategies, opportunities and challenges in the process of farmer innovations and innovative interventions in the value-chain of market oriented livestock development in relation to sustainable use of natural resources in two districts in Ethiopia.

The New Extensionist is a global view of extension and advisory services (EAS) that reinvents and clearly articulates the role of EAS in the rapidly-changing rural context. It argues for an expanded role for EAS within agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and development of new capacities at different levels to play this role.

The presented model of operations capacity planning allows obtaining quantitative dimensions of the service system parameters for Administrative Services Centre. A methodology for the practical application of this model has also been presented here. The present paper aims at offering support for operations managers in the service sector for decision making regarding the operations capacity. The paper was presented at 7th annual International scientific conference "New dimensions in the development of society", held in Jelgava, Latvia, in 2011. 

The Policy Compendium for Rural Advisory Services (RAS) is a tool that contributes to filling the gap between the rural advisory services (RAS) policy environment and RAS efforts in the field. It helps direct decisions and facilitate successful policy processes and outcomes in extension and advisory services by making knowledge accessible, fostering synergies and promoting policy processes to improve RAS and rural development. It has two purposes.