By Muhammad Mudassar ISLAMABAD, Feb. 02 (INP-WealthPK): Pakistan’s agriculture sector can achieve the desired growth rate by enhancing connectivity with industry and ensuring direct access of farmers to market without the involvement of middlemen. According to the World Bank, the development in the agriculture sector plays a more effective role in raising incomes as compared to other sectors. The most common problems the agriculture sector faces are low productivity, under/over employment, income disparity, lack of educational facilities, etc. Soft (schooling, health institution) and physical infrastructure (electrification, rural road, and irrigation facilities) are very crucial for agriculture production, rural development, and poverty alleviation. Roads help deliver the agricultural inputs to farms and output to the market. In Pakistan, farmers are not connected with the industries directly. The farmer is completely enslaved by the middleman, who controls the payments for what the latter produces. Farmers have little or no control in which markets or buyers their products are sold to. Technology is an important factor in agriculture and rural development. Agricultural machinery and equipment have undergone numerous changes as a result of technological advancements. Small-scale farmers account for 60 percent of Pakistan's rural population, and their livelihood is entirely dependent on agriculture. Small-scale farmers are unable to buy the latest agriculture equipment. The agricultural sector in Pakistan is contributing 19.2 percent to the gross domestic product and 38.5 percent labor force is engaged with this sector. The agriculture sector showed growth of 2.77 percent in the fiscal year 2020-21. Moreover, almost 65 to 70 percent of people are directly and indirectly dependent on the agriculture sector. Shrinking farmland, water scarcity, climate change, lack of technology, and rural to urban labor migration led to a slow agriculture growth rate. For better connectivity, the business must be moved to rural areas to earn handsome profits through low input costs that will be beneficial to alleviate poverty. Industries and farmers must be connected directly so that the farmer can get a good profit. The government must invest in research and development and introduce the latest climate-resilient and high-yield seed varieties. The government must educate the farmers through seminars and training through different agriculture extension activities. The growth of the agro-industrial cluster has enormous potential for farmers to earn additional income. The government should take more steps to increase agriculture production which will improve the living standard of rural people.