The Conflicted Recession: Impact on the Bottom Billion

by Andre

I learned earlier today that yet another 50 migrant farm workers were let go by Canada’s largest mushroom producer, Rol-Land Farms. My initial reaction mirrored the mood expressed in a recent entry I posted regarding Canada’s immigrant farm worker program.

The audacity of it all, I fumed, contemplating the actual reason for these most recent firings. I knew for certain that what was happening had everything to do with their very recent right to unionize. Since this is something that might just give them a voice in a country that doesn’t know they exist, the profit margins of Rol-Land Farms would surely be compromised.

As I read further into the issue however, it became apparent that Rol-Land Farms wasn’t necessarily taking advantage of the migrant worker program but was instead in the same serious financial state that many companies find themselves in today. Rol-Land Farms recently received protection from its creditors under an order from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. This will give them some time to pay off a $35.3 million loan provided to them by the Bank of Montreal. Similar to bankruptcy protection, Rol-land farms will now be monitored during a company wide restructuring period that will hopefully have the company back on its legs by April.

This is an example of what many like-minded individuals may be struggling with today. That fact is that the recession isn’t targeting the forgotten migrant farmers and leaving the rest of the population alone. I have many friends in the financial sector that have been laid off in recent weeks. These people are suddenly forced to compete in an overly saturated unemployment pool with limited finances and increasing interest rates on their debts. Even still, with no realistic relief in the financial, and countless other employment sectors coming, the plight of the migrant workers will surely be consigned into oblivion once again.

What troubles me most is the effect this sort of thing will have on the bottom billion of the world.

I am reminded of Bob Geldof’s Live 8 from a few years ago. Much of the world was brought together with the message that capable governments had to act in order to carry out their Millennium Development Goals promise. Progress was certainly made, but a senior UN official recently suggested that for the goals to be realized by their 2015 target, current growth rates need to increase by over 7%. With much of the developed world worrying about their own troubled economy, I fear the necessary urgency regarding the MDG’s will be further ignored.

… falling commodity prices, slackening remittance receipts, falling FDIs and reduction in aid flows will all bode negatively to the continent.”

The global economic slump will hit African economies hardest. Not in any comparable dollar amount of course, but with the understanding that any further negative impact to the forgotten continent could easily push recent gains back to below zero. As mentioned in an excellent American Chronicle report; falling commodity prices, slackening remittance receipts, falling FDIs and reduction in aid flows will all bode negatively to the continent.

Governments that are barely able to stay afloat when things are going well will have no means to bailout important industries or fight for further foreign investment like the richer nations do. Additional loans from a strained World Bank or IMF will surely be as useless in propping up these economies as they were in the past. Today’s coup d’état in Guinea may very well be an early sign in yet another downward spiral that has hampered sustained growth in the continent since the end of colonialism.

I will close for now in suggesting that this is not an infomercial on what you should do to save the world. There is no concert or single event that will rescue the bottom billion from the poverty trap that they are locked into. I am simply concerned, as the title of this site suggests, that it may take generations to understand the full impact this recession will have on the world. I am concerned about the workers in the automobile industry as much as I am concerned about my friends in the financial district as much as the voiceless billions around the planet.

This is simply the world I see.