The analysis of the effect of COVID19 on the Rural economy

According to the principles and concepts of economic geography, the limitation rule is one of the most important and significant rules in economic geography, thus, sometimes the physical environment provides restrictions on the habitat of living organisms and sometimes provides a favorable environment for various human activities, such as breeding, raising animals and producing of the various goods and crops. These restrictions include natural and man-made crises such as floods, earthquakes, fires, droughts, hurricanes, infectious diseases, war, sanctions, and so on. Throughout the history of human societies, diseases have affected the individual and social life of human beings in various ways. The economic dimension of human life is no exception to this effect, and when it comes to a Pandemic, the scale of the crisis will be enormous and even on a global scale.

Today, the world is witnessing an unprecedented expansion of the COVID 19 pandemic, which its expansion and impact have been unprecedented in the history of the world. Due to the increase in the rate of human movement in recent years, the spread rate and consequently its Prevalence power is doubled. The disease first started in a dense urban area. With the movement of the urban population to rural areas, the disease is also transmitted to less density of rural areas. In terms of the speed of transmission of the disease from one person to another, dense urban centers are the most suitable place for the rapid spread of the disease; Therefore, cities became the focus of the disease; Moreover, although it is often said that in this global pandemic we are all in the same boat and the danger threatens everyone, the fact is that we are not all in the same situation on this boat; In other words, some are in a safe place and others are in the vulnerable and damaged part of the boat, some have rescue equipment and others are useless of these facilities and equipment to varying degrees. Therefore, unbalanced pandemic spread can be seen in cities as well. In urban slums, the disease takes more victims and, as a result, denser places become hotspots of the disease.



However, villages are more vulnerable to this pandemic than cities in several ways.

Therefore, this article tries to answer the following questions:

1. How do human phenomena; Like the COVID19 pandemic, affect the rural economy?

2. What strategies have the world's rural economies taken to address this challenge?

This research is going to investigate the impact of the corona pandemic on the rural economy, this applied research, based on the descriptive method. All rural areas in the world are our research population and two Countries one from developed countries –Canada- and another from the developing world – India- have been chosen as the research sample. To fully understand the subject and gain the necessary theoretical insight, the Document based or library method is used with a focus on tools such as books and publications, the Internet, and articles. The collected data were described and analyzed based on available documents. The results indicate that the costs imposed by the corona epidemic on the production system, as well as the reduction in production and supply domestically and externally. This effect even can be exaggerated in rural areas because mostly they are the focal point for producing the food and they are the start point of the supply chain. So this situation could lead to higher inflation and lower economic growth in these areas. Indeed, the Pandemic by interruption of the supply chain, demand, and liquidity, can cause a deep impact on enterprises and on the supply of labor, consumption of goods and services. Especially by it reduce the income of consumers and producers of agricultural products, and consequently, it is causing a negative impact on tourism and its related revenues such as handicrafts and services

The Results

The finding and results of this study show that the COVID19 pandemic affects all components of the rural economy including production, distribution, and consumption; also it affects agriculture, services, industry as well as the labor force. Because COVID19, mainly targets the respiratory system and usually farmers are among the high-risk population they are highly vulnerable and the lack of health facilities makes the rural condition even worse.

It was assumed that because of the human need for food, the outbreak of pandemic will not affect the agricultural sector and its productions, but due to the closure of restaurants and most of the food caterings this sector also hit badly and because the agricultural products are perishable and cannot be stored for a long term, the agriculture sector and its labor force also affected negatively. In general, the weakness of and lack of access to health centers and facilities in rural areas, more poverty of rural people, demographic characteristics, and the reliance on the livelihood economy and small businesses that can make it more vulnerable in terms of its size are among the reasons that make the rural area as a critical area in facing with this Pandemic.

Therefore, guaranteeing the purchase of products, allocating support package, tax exemptions, adjusting energy rates, facilitating the bank's regulations, allocating low-interest loans to farmers, deferring tax payments, is among the kinds of support that governments can provide for their rural population. Providing the market also is the most important facilities that they are needed, because without a market for their production they cannot survive. In fact, the COVID19 has an impact on the supply chain, demand and cash exchange, on enterprises and on the supply of labor, consumption of goods and services, and especially by reducing the income of consumers and producers of agricultural products in the short and long term on the economy.

Thus, it seems that although the COVID19 Pandemic may disappear from the world in the not-so-definite future, its economic effects may last for many years or even decades.