Hub’s Guest Review: Black Gold
If you’re in New York City and have a hankering for a cup of java, best head on down to the Village Cinema on 12th Street between University Place and 5th Avenue to catch Black Gold—a documentary all about the farmers who grow the beans that make your coffee.
While you’re shelling out $2 or more for a cup of Starbucks coffee, the prices netted by coffee farmers themselves are so low that in Ethiopia some have been forced to abandoned their fields1.
Directed by Marc and Nick Francis, Black Gold chronicles the hard work of Tadesse Meskela in Ethiopia, where he manage cooperative of some 74,000 coffee farmers striving just to survive in the grossly unbalanced business of global coffee—a profitable, but skewed, $80 billion industry. (Note: Meskela will be present during screenings tonight and Friday to discuss his Oromia Coffee Union cooperative’s progress and the importance of fair trade in coffee.)
At the crux of Black Gold is the concept of fair trade, which strives to reward farmers outside government subsidies with a fair price for their crops while cutting out the middle men and big business who dip into their profits.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I have been a dedicated drinker of the coffee grown by Meskela’s farmers, which is roasted by the fair-trade-supporting Equal Exchange, since my first taste on Earth Day in April.
But that doesn’t make Black Gold any less of a film that should be mandatory for caffeine addicts—especially here in New York—who are so detached in their own daily lives that they rarely stop and think where their coffee, let alone the rest of their food, comes from.
The film is understated, with simple text narration as it follows Meskela’s work in Africa and elsewhere as he struggles to find new markets for his cooperative’s fair-trade coffee—which includes organic and non-organic varieties—overseas. In fact, it is this simple approach to presentation that makes Black Gold’s images, statistics and message all the more clear.
The film also follows individual farmers, trade talks at the World Trade Organization, while giving us a window into industrial coffee tasting and roasting industry. About the only hitch pops up during a look at a coffee roaster that seems out of joint from rest of the film, though I think it’s also aimed at filling in the chasm that seems to separate urban coffee drinkers from the distant rural fields the beans are grown in.
Fair trade isn’t just limited to coffee, but also chocolate, cherries, and a host of other crops and products made or grown in third world countries by artisans or farmers who gain little profit from their labors despite the inflated prices you and I pay at our local malls.
It’s a bit comforting to see larger markets beyond small specialty stories, like Whole Foods (in Houston, its HEB offers coffee from South American cooperatives; in Cape Canveral, Florida, look for the Green Section at Publix) carrying fair trade—and organic—coffee.
But just a couple hours and $10 for Black Gold will provide a better window into how your coffee choice affects much more than your own personal morning pick-me-up.
1Ed.’s note: One of the more-heartrending parts of the film was watching scenes of malnourished children in one of the regions in Africa where Starbucks sources its coffee from; “semi-malnourished” children were being turned away from severely underfunded medical clinics because their conditions weren’t as life-threatening as others’. Obviously, Starbucks isn’t the socially responsible messiah it makes itself out to be.
Additional resources:
1. Locate a theater playing Black Gold near you
2. Tadesse Meskela’s Oromia Coffee Union of cooperatives
Felicia C. Sullivan » Blog Archive » things worth reading… said,
October 19, 2006 at 5:04 pm
[...] *jaded about publishing and the churn of the book business? jy renews his love of books after witnessing a feat of feats in the office. *i’m not sure why i can’t simply hijack all of jasmin’s posts, however, here are a few that bump the swoon factor. *the ugliest pillow contest had me in tears (simply for the fact that we may have owned one of these wretched things, in addition to the plastic sofa). *this is why people should be duct-taped. down with all of these affected hipsters and their chelsea lofts. *great post by sarah on being “ettlingered” (soothed my vertigo over my pending shoot). *wait? fall is a big season for books? really? you don’t say. chaos in the book industry! take cover! hide your kids! there may be one too many books on the shelves. tell me something i don’t know. *miss. merrick reminds me of the joys of a little housecleaning and keeping only which is significant and useful. so much wasteful spending and conspicuous consumption. why not own what we love instead of filling our homes with clutter? *read her blog immediately. the vibrant color, the sweet pies…sometimes i just want to lick the screen. Tag Me:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Starbucks Denying Ethiopian Growers Income? said,
October 26, 2006 at 1:22 pm
[...] Tadesse Meskela, head of the Oromia coffee farmers cooperative union in Ethiopia, as featured in Black Gold sums up the coffee crisis small-scale coffee farmers and farm workers at the very bottom of the supply chain are facing. “Coffee shops can sell Sidamo and Harar coffees for up to £14 a pound because of the beans’ specialty status. But Ethiopian coffee farmers only earn between 30p and 59p for their crop, barely enough to cover the cost of production. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Fair Trade Rice is Nicer said,
November 15, 2006 at 3:39 pm
[...] Co-op America has a fantastic article on the issues surrounding fair-trade rice. Unsurprisingly (oh cynicism, my old friend), rice farmers face the same problems coffee growers do obtaining a decent price for their goods. Most of the white and brown rice we eat in the US is grown on US farms. But most of the sweet smelling “aromatic” varieties of long grain rice—which are increasingly popular in the US—come to our tables from Asia: Jasmine and Coral from Thailand, and Basmati from India and Pakistan. If you’ve had a meal including aromatic rices recently, chances are that that rice was grown in rain-fed paddies and that small-scale farmers harvested it by hand. Unfortunately, what smelled so sweet on the stove may not have reflected a sweet deal for farmers. These producers are vulnerable to shifting prices and exploitative middle merchants, so they often earn far below a fair wage on which they could support their families. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Small-Coffeehouse Owner Calls Out Starbucks said,
December 20, 2006 at 1:28 pm
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The Worsted Witch » Coffee: Beans to Buzz Tonight said,
January 4, 2007 at 11:15 am
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June 1, 2007 at 12:11 am
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