"Black Gold" documentary review

On Thursday, February 22nd, I was lucky enough to view the documentary Black Gold, a film that features farmers of some of the best coffee in the world. The film played at the Pickford, as part of the 10-day Bellingham Human Rights Film Festival. For more info about either, click on their names, which are links to their respective websites.

Black Gold follows a man named Tadesse Meskela, who works as a respresentative and lobbyist for the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-Operative Union. His mission is to lobby exporters for a more fair price for the quality coffee that his farmers produce. The Oromia Co-op serves over 74,000 coffee farmers; who, as the film exposes, can barely survive on the income they receive for their product. One farmer interviewed claimed that a surveyor visited one season and established a price of .75 birr (08 cents) per kilo of green coffee, without any negotiation, and that was what he was forced to accept for his coffee. The average price for a kilo of coffee purchased from the Oromia region at the time was 2-3 birr. The average retail price for that same kilo of coffee here in the U.S. is 2000 birr. By that time the green coffee will have travelled through several channels: Processing, Importing, Roasting, Packaging/Distributing, Retailing. The farmer sees the smallest percentage of income in this process. Part of Tadesse's plan is to eliminate parts of this equation--if he can sell directly to Roasters, his farmers can receive the percentage of income that would have been claimed by importers--or if retailers Import and Roast their own coffee, then that eliminates half of the process. It was apparent that the farmers were absolutely not receiving a fair price for their coffee, as they could not clothe, feed (cleanly & healthily), and educate their families based on their wage.

Why does this happen? If one here in the states pays $3 for a latte that has 2 shots of espresso in it, that is only about 100 beans--or approximately 15 grams of coffee, why is the cutback to the farmers so low? Each cup of brewed coffee requires even less coffee, but we still pay between $1.20-$2.00 for it. The film accredits unfair distribution of profit to the lopsided format to the World Trade Organization. I agree with this completely. When the WTO convenes, delegates are sent from each negotiating union. Unions are required to finance their delegates participation, so as a result, richer unions can send more delegates, and poorer ones can send less. For example, the European Union sends 650 delegates, while the African union sends 11. This means that when negotiations and trade decisions are all happening in hundreds (maybe thousands) of closed-door meetings, the African union is unable to represent itself at the same scale that the European Union can. If one continent can only participate in 1/6 of the meetings that another union can, then they are obviously crippled by their logistical disadvantage. Many African delegates are fighting for a more fair system of negotiation in the WTO, but so far to little avail. Currently, Africa as an entire continent only participates in just over 1% of all global trade. If this were to merely double to 2%, it would garner over $70 billion in income yearly--which is over 5 times what the entire continent receives yearly in international federal aid. One delegate for the African union said, "Africa needs aid. But to sustain, Africa does not need aid. It needs trade." This was a focus that I did not expect from the film.

As a Starbucks employee, I was obviously curious about how the film would portray Starbucks, both as an exporter of Ethiopian coffee, and a western socio-cultural icon of gourmet coffee products. As an exporter, I believe they did an accurate and fair portrayal. Most consumers don't know that Starbucks really only purchases about 2% of all global coffee production each year, and only about 10-15% of our purchases come from Africa, and an even smaller percentage from Ethiopia specifically. We are not a major player, especially in Africa. Our main focus is in Latin America, where we purchase over 75% of our coffee. The film acknowledges accurately that the major heavyweights of coffee buyers are Kraft (Maxwell House, Yuban, Gevalia), Nestle (Nescafe), Procter & Gamble (Folgers, Millstone), and Sara Lee (Senseo). Lest we forget that coffee was an international phenomenon long before the U.S. took hold as a major consumer, and that many European brands import significant percentages of global coffee production as well. The U.S. is a relatively new major competitor, only as recently as the last 1980's beginning to play an influential role in purchasing and pricing. Starbucks is becoming more and more of an international icon, but is only slowly growing in it's need to purchase more coffee. Tea is a major focus in many of Starbucks new markets, especially in southern Asia and South America. So Starbucks was respresented accurately as an Exporter in the film.

Culturally, the film threw it's tongue-in-cheek barbs at Starbucks, constantly juxtaposing the love for coffee that the Ethiopian farmers have with the selfish and careless attitudes of many Starbucks consumers, armed with purses, shopping bags, and 24-oz. caramel frapuccinos. Not much love for coffee in those images. The film also shows the original Starbucks store on Pike Place, with the store manager and a barista talking and leading a coffee tasting. The two partners were painfully over-the-top with their presentation, and represented much of what is criticizable about the evolving Starbucks experience: lack of knowledge regarding cultivation of their product, a seemingly artificial demeanor, and a general sense of corporate machinery at its worst. I didn't disagree with any of what I saw; in fact, I appreciated it. Starbucks does not hire based on how much one wants to learn about the industry and what the company is doing as a part of it. Starbucks retail stores hire people who will create a customer desire-focused environment, and appeal to a low denominator of social interaction that satisfies basic human insecurity by affirming vapid and empty behavior patterns. I hope that if I were the partner who was featured in the film, I would have represented the company in a more positive light, especially for the fact that my curiosity with Starbucks has very little to do with consumer appeal, and much more to do with corporate responsibility.

The coffee industry, like any other inter-continental industry, is structurally flawed. Why? Because it is run by humans. Humans are selfish, inconsiderate, and insatiable. Some of the humans in the industry are so selfish that they will discourage a fair trading system, while other humans' selfishness is the only thing keeping their families alive. Many people want to know what they can do. For most, the popular choice is to only purchase Fair Trade Certified Coffee. I think that's a great plan; however, you need to be educated about what you are buying. For instance, in 2005, the average NYSE trading price for a pound of green coffee was $1.20. Fair Trade Certified coffee went for $1.26. Starbucks' average price paid on the market was $1.28. Does that mean they paid $1.28 everywhere in the world for each pound of coffee they purchased? No, like everyone else, they paid what the market decided. But just buying Fair Trade Certified coffee will in general mostly serve more one's desire to feel good about their purchases than it does for the actual cultivators of one's pruchased products. If you are considering different brands of coffee, find out what they are paying for their green coffee, relate that to the regional averages, and then purchase. Buying Fair Trade coffee for the sake of buying Fair Trade coffee is, I dare to say, just as ignorant as not buying it at all.

One must also consider what it means to be Fair Trade Certified. You can go to Transfair USA's website to see what they say about certification requirements, but you should also know that it is a quite lengthy and expensive process for farmers or co-operative to become certified, and it is just not worth it most of the time. In Latin America, it can cost up to $30,000 USD to be certified initially, and a bi-annual renewal of certification can cost up to $15,000 USD. The fact that less than 2% of the coffee in the world is Fair Trade certified indicates (to me, at least) that being certified just doesn't benefit the farmer enough to be willing to spend that kind of time and money. Just for fun, I'll let you know that Starbucks happens to be the largest importer of Fair Trade certified coffee in North America, purchasing about 21% of North America's Fair Trade coffee, or about 10% of all global production (11.5 million pounds, or 5.2 million kilos). So the consumer, once again, needs to be more educated before he or she becomes an advocate for a product or product-related buzzword that he or she in all actuality knows very little about.

All in all, the film was excellent. The filmmakers covered everything--the Ethiopian farmers' living conditions, the love they have for their coffee, the general selfish apathy about coffee that the entire western world has for coffee (the film also shows footage from an Italian espresso bar and the World Barista Championships held in Seattle), the unfair lopsided trade system, and the need for a more fair system which can be achieved by a more educated and willing consumer base that cares for human rights and corporate responsibility. If they ever release it on DVD, go ahead and rent it. Otherwise, if you feel a need to make a more responsible decision about your coffee consumption, make a genuine attempt to learn. Here are a few places you can check out:
Transfair USA
Starbucks' Corporate Social Responsibility Site (Starbucks' Annual CSR report will be published in late March and will subsequently be available online at that time)
Global Exchange

Stay tuned for more of my research findings regarding Fair Trade, "ethical" shopping practices, and corporate responsibility.
Meanwhile, engage, educate, and enjoy.