Black Gold

Have you ever thought that the latté you’re going to drink after the movie has consequences for a family in Ethiopia? The global coffee trade is now worth $US80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil. However, prices paid to coffee farmers have been forced so low that many have abandoned their fields. Nowhere is this paradox more evident than Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is on a mission to save his 74,000 growers from bankruptcy. Structured as a dialogue between the west and Africa, the film alternates between the increasingly desperate situation of Tadesse’s local growers’ cooperative and the corporate culture which has grown up around our favourite cup. This is a cogent analysis of the Starbucking of the world and the failure of the World Trade Organisation to address the crucial issue of agricultural subsidies. Time for us all to wake up and smell the coffee.

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You will need to watch Marc and Nick Francis's remarkable Black Gold, one of the strongest documentaries I've seen.

Stuart Klawans, The Nation