Karachi : Chairman of National Business Group of FPCCI, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Monday said the agriculture sector is being ignored since decades and further closing eyes to the problems of this sector will amount to suicide.

The continued fall of agriculture has added to the problems of masses and it has put the integrity of the country at stake, he said. 

Mian Zahid Hussain said that sixty percent population and the majority of exports are lined to agriculture while hundred percent population is dependent on this sector for their food needs. 

Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that agriculture is the largest employment providing sector and its plunge is hitting production and exports as well. 

Masses are uneasy over food insecurity while billions are being spent on import of food items which should not be an issue in the country having the best canal system in the world, he observed. 

Apart from the apathy on the part of policymakers, the agriculture sector is also facing problems like the increased role of loan sharks, middlemen, fake fertiliser, medicine and substandard seed, hiking cost of energy and scarcity of water. 

The business leader noted that the critical decisions regarding this orphan sector are taken by those who have no exposure to this sector and farmers are never taken on board which frustrates major initiatives. 

Benefits of different packages and loans find their way to the influential and the matters of support price also discourages farmers many of whom switch to other crops resulting in food insecurity. 

Highly influential people are running industries which are fully dependent on agriculture who manoeuvre policies to their benefit on the cost of masses and farmers, he said, adding that water scarcity is the most important problem of all which should be addressed on priority basis otherwise country will become a desert.