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About 50 farmers in the Nadowli-Kaleo District of the Upper West Region have benefited from a field experimental work designed to help them to increase farm yields and crop variety production as part of efforts to eradicate poverty. The initiative by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, through its Africa Rising Project, exposed the farmers to inter-cropping, high yielding-crop varieties, the importance of some crops, and the best application of fertilisers on specific crops for high-yield harvests. The field trial at Goli in the Nadowli-Kaleo District, involved experimentation with maize, roselle, sesame, cowpea and pigeon pea in different permutations to find out how best to maximise land use and land space. It also examined the number of rounds of spraying with pesticides required for cowpea, in particular. The experimental exercise lasted three months from the time of planting of seeds to their maturing. It involved six varieties of maize to evaluate their respective responses to various levels of fertiliser, inter-crop of maize and roselle, and then maize and sesame to check their ability to develop alongside each other. Combating poverty Mrs Mary Asante, research coordinator of the Africa Rising Project for the Upper West Region, said the exercise was essentially intended to promote better farming practices among the farmers as an effort to combat poverty. She said it offered alternatives for farmers to maximise land space while harvesting high yields of both cash crops and other farm produce for food and the domestic market. Mrs Asante explained that roselle, for instance, provided both financial and nutritional values for the farmers as a nutritious vegetable for soup, and the stalks used for weaving basket, while sesame was a cash crop, a source of vitamin A and other medicinal properties. She insisted that although the roselle plant � which belongs to the hibiscus family � was new to the farmers, it offered them a good source of food and money, if they took full advantage of it. She advised the farmers to not burn their farms after harvest, but to allow the crops to decay to fertilise the soil.