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Sustainable Yogic Agriculture
Sustainable Yogic Agriculture (SYA) is a program started in Northern India in 2009. The program has been a collaboration between Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University in Gujurat India and the Brahma Kumaris Rural Development wing. The program has now been publicly backed by the Indian Government. A key member of Narendra Modi's Cabinet, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh announced the governments support for the program. With the governments support the program has been redesigned into Akhil Bharatiya Krushak Sashakatikaran Abhijan (ABKSA), and was launched in December 2015. ABKSA extends the initial scope of the SYA program to include teaching meditation and self empowerment to the farmers themselves. This is possibly a response to the problem of farmer suicides in India. ABKSA now comprises three main elements:
 * 1. A self empowerment program for Indian farmers;
 * 2. Ongoing research on whether the use of meditation can improve crop yields;
 * 3. Education on a blend of traditional and organic farming techniques.

One basic premise of the Brahma Kumaris environmental initiative is that thoughts and consciousness can affect the natural environment. More esoteric approaches to plant development are nothing new, perhaps most widely known is Findhorn Ecovillage. In 2012, experiments were being conducted in partnership with leading agricultural universities in India to establish if the practice of Brahma Kumaris meditation in conjunction with implementing more traditional organic farming methods could be shown to have a measurable and positive affect on crop development. An article published in the Journal of Asian Agri-History reviews two separate studies on SYA. One study was conducted by G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (GBPUAT), Pantnagar, Uttarakhand and the other by Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University (SDUAT) of Gujarat. The review reports that the Brahma Kumaris meditation techniques used enhanced seed growth, seed germination rates and increased the level of microbes present in the soil.