The filmmakers of Black Gold promise that your coffee will not taste the same after seeing the documentary. While this may be artistic hyperbole, the film is terribly striking in its presentation of the economic crisis in Ethiopia, and the devastating effects of multi-national coffee conglomerations’ low payment thresholds for the Ethiopian farmers responsible for a large percentage of the world’s coffee output. With this 80 billion-dollar global industry under scrutiny, and as the benefits and limitations of fair trade are brought to the foreground, the film forces one to evaluate the true cost of the latte in your hand.
The film revolves around Tadesse Meskela, a man dedicated to bringing a fair-trade coffee market to the more than 70,000 struggling farmers in the coalition he represents. As the liaison for the Oromo Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, Meskela travels all over the world to bring small buyers the coffee grown in Ethiopia and to convince them to purchase the coffee, not at standard New York prices, which are determined by the market-dominated global mega-corpororations like Kraft, Nestle, and Starbucks, but at fair trade market prices. Coffee growers complain that they have seen the price of their product plummet to below $.12 for a kilogram of coffee, which is then resold at an exorbitant profit in coffee houses and chains in Western nations.
Marc and Nick Francis, the young British filmmakers behind this documentary, are brilliantly aware of the market forces that guide the coffee trade, and are also well acquainted with the intimate lives of the coffee farmers eeking out survival while the world grows wealthy on their product. While they clearly understand the problems that face the coffee growers, they are also experts behind the camera, providing sumptious footage that serves as a provocative backdrop for the farmers’ plight, while at the same time expertly blending scenes of farmers and their families in poverty with fat and ignorant Westerners happily paying more than five dollars for a latte or cappuccino. The contrast is effective in its emphasis on the economic conditions that have forced some farmers to give up growing coffee in favour of a more profitable agricultural enterprise: growing the narcotic plant chat.
From the coffee sorting factories in Addis Ababa, where women hand-sort bad coffee beans from the good–a vital link in the chain of production–for mere cents a day, to the New York Commodities Exchange where international coffee prices are set, to London, where Meskela meets with small chain coffee buyers to convince them to purchase coffee at fair market trade prices, the film is remarkably effective at illuminating the problems without proselytizing fair trade solutions or demonizing the perpetrators of the global trade inequalities. Instead, the film is unequivocal in its focus on the farmers’ needs, where their very survival rests upon their ability to sell their product (grown and harvested under backbreaking conditions) at a price that can support them and their communities. Ethiopia’s chief export revenue comes from coffee, but against the big multinationals, farmers have little bargaining power. Though the film is remarkably evenhanded, the film’s clear presentation of fact speaks volumes in favour of trade reform.
If there is a hero in the film, it is Meskela, who tirelessly works to raise the price his farmers can get for coffee. His goals come across in remarkably insightful commentary as he leads the brothers across Ethiopia to show them the poverty-stricken farmers, reducing the plight to a simple economic equation. Just 1% increase in the continent’s share of world trade would generate $70 billion per year, five times what Africa currently receives in aid money from the West. The conclusion is clear: fair trade, not aid, will result in the most effective change…not just for Ethiopia, but for all of Africa.
out of 5