Poor crop establishment is a major problem in Northern Karnataka, particularly for subsistence farmers in rainfed and poorly irrigated environments. 'On-farm' seed priming which entails soaking seeds, overnight, before sowing is a simple technology that farmers can use to improve crop establishment and increase yield. Seed priming was followed for maize and sorghum seeds in the cropping system in farmers field at 8 locations in Haveri district of Northern Karnataka. At two locations baby trial recorded significantly higher grain yield in intercropped sorghum (23.63 q ha-1) than mother trial (18.10 q ha-1). At one location, among the priming treatments, osmopriming (64 q ha-1), biopriming (70.48 q ha-1) and combination of all priming methods (71.08 q ha-1) recorded significantly higher maize kernel yield in mother trial as compared to baby trials. Farmers in the study area had a perception that sorghum substitution with maize gave high monetary return as compared to sole sorghum. In addition, maize plants from bioprimed seeds were quite good in retaining higher number of green leaves per plant during 15th days prior to harvesting compared to unprimed seeds.