Page 27 - BOOK OF PROGRAM ICAGRI 2

Abstract Invited Speaker

Prof. Dr. Ir. Ahmad Humam Hamid, MA
Agriculture and Rural Development

Covid-19, Food Security, and The Rural Poor.

Ahmad Humam Hamid*
*Department of Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture, Syiah Kuala University,
Banda Aceh, Indonesia
*Pusat Riset Pembangunan Pedesaan dan Pertanian Berkelanjutan (Center for
Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development), Syiah Kuala University,
Banda Aceh, Indonesia

email: humamhamid@unsyiah.ac.id

Abstract: Nowadays, at least three-quarters of the world's poorest live in rural
areas in developing countries. They spread in most of the continents of Asia,
Africa, and Central and Latin America. Most of them, with or without productive
assets, rely their livelihoods on self-employment or seasonal wage labor, which
by nature is informal. As a consequence, those rural poor are excluded from state
regulation regarding social protection including social insurance, and other
employment guarantees. Many casual days laborers are considered the most
vulnerable group among the poorest when the rural areas face whatever problems
emerge related to rural livelihoods in the developing countries.

The narrative of Covid-19 in the last sixth months has been very much associated
with urban areas. Rarely rural areas receive enough attention both from scientists
and practitioners alike. Although the immediate effect of Covid-19 in the world
has been mainly urban areas, the next immediate effect will soon come to rural
areas. In contrast to urban, rural areas are not well prepared to deal with a direct
effect such as morbidity and mortality, and other related health issues. People in
rural areas also unable to protect themselves when the indirect effects such as
shocks in demand happen, and the contagion becomes transmitted to production,
incomes, and consumption as well.

Both the direct and indirect effects of Covid-19 in rural areas will affect food
security and nutrition, particularly for the poorest. History always recorded
whenever incomes fall and food prices rise, the rural poor have to find out the
survival strategy, which is mainly attributed to the reduction of quantity and
quality of their consumption. This produces the next stage as revealed in the
pandemic history, which is termed as “a disease poverty vicious circle ” in which
a combination of the causal driven between poverty on health and health on
poverty takes place.

What the state should do is focus on both humanitarian measures together with
medium and long-term policies that would ensure the strategy for rural economic

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