>>REVIEW
BLACK GOLD
DIRECTED BY: Nick and Marc Francis
Wednesday, November 15
Uptown Screen
Globalization has now tainted your morning cup of coffee.
According to the documentary Black Gold, two billion cups of coffee are drunk every day. International sales since 1990 have gone from 30 to 80 billion a year, dominated by four multinationals – Kraft, Nestle, Proctor and Gamble and Sara Lee.
Ethiopia is the largest producer of coffee beans. Fifteen million survive on cultivating the beans and it represents 67 per cent of its exported product.
Black Gold follows Tadesse Meskela, who represents more than 74,000 Ethiopian coffee farmers. He works hard to make the lives of his farmers better, travelling to trade shows, encouraging buyers to import fair trade coffee by eliminating links in the chain from farmer to coffee shop.
However, after the collapse of the international trade agreement that regulated the price of coffee, fair trade is a relative term – the price of coffee has fallen to a 30-year low.
Meskela’s union buys coffee from 101 different farms across Ethiopia. Farmers make about $0.75 birr for a kilo. If 80 cups can be made from a kilo, and a cup is averaged at $2.90 U.S. (compared to 1 birr – 12 cents – for a cup in Ethiopia) that’s a lot of cash that doesn’t make it into the hands of the farmers.
But coffee companies need to have the perfect blend, where every bean is perfect (approximately 50 for a cup). How do they get the perfect beans? By going through an entire crop by hand – where bean counting takes on an even more nullifying reality. Workers in these factories make less than 50 cents for an eight-hour shift.
Because of these minuscule wages and profits, farmers are dropping out of the coffee business, many replacing their crops with the narcotic plant chat, that brings in a larger profit.
The doc falters with its few scenes outside Ethiopia, hastily tying coffee profits to larger questions concerning Africa, catching Americans in a couple of scenes where – surprise, surprise – they come across vain and stupid (during a coffee house tour of a Starbucks in Seattle, the wild-eyed manager claims her job to be the "most special thing ever").
So, with the importance of coffee in the daily victuals of people, why aren’t the people making it getting due recompense? Because the World Trade Organization sets international trade conditions during discussions where developing countries are no match for the swath of delegates brought in by North America and the European Union. It’s sad that, if, as the documentary claims, African world trade went up one per cent, the profit – $70 billion – would be five times what it receives in aid.
Black Gold will have a one-time screening at the Uptown Screen on Wednesday, November 15 at 7 p.m. as part of the Arusha Action Film Series. There will be two expert speakers at the event – Nan Eskenazi of the Good Earth Café and Philip McCutcheon of Haymarket Books and Cafe. Groups such as the Arusha Centre, Good Earth Café, Haymarket Books and Café, Centre for Public Interest, Just Shirts and Café Con Vida will also be at the screening handing out information. |
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