How did this beautiful cup of coffee get here?
The new documentary film Black Gold is an astounding look at what it means for the powerful at WTO talks to set a price of $0.22 for a kilo of coffee on the world market.
You might presume this topic could easily grow dull, but it never does: Directors Marc and Nick Francis select a taut bunch of stories, nicely edited and set to a well composed score that combine to keep you on edge throughout the film.
We follow a fellow who markets coffee from an Ethiopian collective, and he repeats a simple message: Africans are not fairly compensated for their crops on the world market. Prices for coffee are artificially low, keep Africans dependent on U.S. aid, and demean an entire people by not paying them what they are worth.
It's not his impassioned words that haunt us most, however, but instead the toddler girl who gets weighed and sent home with her mother and no help because she's only "semi-malnourished" and doesn't qualify for aid.
It's the fellow hacking out an beautiful coffee patch to clear it for growing chat, a narcotic leaf that folks chew to feel better and that commands a higher income per acre than coffee.
This documentary is definitely worth seeing if you are at all interested in how your cup of Starbucks got into your hand and as such is destined to be a minor classic in the growing field of food journalism (see also The Future of Food) -- it's a must-see for the conscientious omnivore.
You might presume this topic could easily grow dull, but it never does: Directors Marc and Nick Francis select a taut bunch of stories, nicely edited and set to a well composed score that combine to keep you on edge throughout the film.
We follow a fellow who markets coffee from an Ethiopian collective, and he repeats a simple message: Africans are not fairly compensated for their crops on the world market. Prices for coffee are artificially low, keep Africans dependent on U.S. aid, and demean an entire people by not paying them what they are worth.
It's not his impassioned words that haunt us most, however, but instead the toddler girl who gets weighed and sent home with her mother and no help because she's only "semi-malnourished" and doesn't qualify for aid.
It's the fellow hacking out an beautiful coffee patch to clear it for growing chat, a narcotic leaf that folks chew to feel better and that commands a higher income per acre than coffee.
This documentary is definitely worth seeing if you are at all interested in how your cup of Starbucks got into your hand and as such is destined to be a minor classic in the growing field of food journalism (see also The Future of Food) -- it's a must-see for the conscientious omnivore.
posted by vanillagrrl at 12:48 PM
1 Comments:
I've thought about this more and keep seeing the image of the guy going into a shop and searching for his country's coffee, amidst the bewildering array of choices at a supermarket. He finds one or two packages that are marked Ethiopian, but as each is branded uniquely, it's difficult to see.
This film suggests that there's a story in the Ethiopians' identity. If supporting Ethiopian growers means supporting fair trade, your coffee tells a story, sells you an opportunity to do good.
Yet from a marketing standpoint the Ethiopians don't have any control over their product or their branding, which makes it difficult to succeed in world markets.
Ethiopia has their advocate in Tadesse Meskela, but without a brand manager, I fear those randomly assembled 12-ounce packages on the Safeway shelf will seldom find their way into anyone's baskets.
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