Smell the Exploitation

By Philip Ngunjiri

Nation Media

December 23, 2007

IT IS THE YEAR 2005, AND A COFfee farmer somewhere in the highlands of Ethiopia is saying he has uprooted his coffee crop to replace it with khat (miraa). Reason: He can get a comparatively higher price for the latter, compared with the low price he is getting for coffee.

Fast forward to 2006 and you are at the New York Board of Trade, a commodity trading floor in New York City, in the US, where the international benchmark price of coffee is set each business day based on weather, supply and demand.

These are scenes from Black Gold, an award winning documentary.

The film contrasts the enormous power and wealth of the multinational coffee companies with the plight of poor Ethiopian coffee farmers as they struggles for a better life.

The documentary explores the effects of international prices (which by 2006 were at an all-time low) on coffee growers. As the film unfolds, it is evident that despite the global coffee market being worth billions of dollars, millions of small-scale coffee farmers are living hand-to-mouth.

Black Gold follows the value chain in the coffee industry, from the Ethiopian growers who cultivate the best coffee in the world, to the New York traders who set the price, to the Seattle baristas at Starbucks who try to meet the high demand.

The documentary focuses on coffee growers of the Oromia region of southern and western Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. It follows Tadesse Meskela, the general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, as he visits coffee-growing regions in Sidamo and Oromia (including the Kilenso Mokonisa Co-operative in the Bure Hora woreda, Borena Zone, Oromia Region), and a coffee processing centre, auction house, and coffee farmers’ union headquarters in Addis Ababa.

Meskela also travels to England and the United States in his efforts to promote Ethiopian coffee by eliminating the numerous middlemen. “There is no coffee which is as high quality as this coffee, but we are getting a low price,” Meskela says in the film. “Our aim is to bring more money into the coffee growers’ pockets.”

Since the documentary started showing around the world in June this year, Oxfam — an international development and relief agency — has co-sponsored its promotion in more than 75 cities and towns around the world.

At the various screenings, hundreds of volunteers have been turning out in support of coffee farmers and have been handing out information and collecting thousands of signatures for the agency’s Big Noise campaign for fair trade.

ANGIE ERRIGO OF The Mail On Sunday says in her review of the documentary, “Hauntingly human by exploring the plight of Ethiopian coffee farmers, whose appalling poverty is laid at the door of a few multinationals and us uninformed consumers.”

Meskela describes the plight of Ethiopian coffee farmers whom he says struggled to feed their children and send them to school when the price of coffee hit a 30-year low in 2001. Some quit farming altogether while others switched to khat. Malnourished and forced to travel long distances to accept foreign aid, some farmers abandoned their land and moved their families to government feeding centres.

The documentary shows the desperation of the coffee farmers in a scene where they seek divine intervention for a higher price, filmed at the Negele Gorbitu Co-operative, near Yirga Cheffe in Abaya Woreda, Borena Zone, in Oromia Region. The footage shows the first Starbucks cafe, the World Barista Championship at the 2005 Specialty Coffee Association of America conference in Seattle and a coffee company in Trieste, Italy. Their opulence contrasts sharply with the footage of the desperate conditions faced by the Ethiopian coffee farmers and their families.

The makers of the documentary, British film makers Nick and Marc Frances use Meskela and the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union to show how poor countries struggle to benefit from global trade.

As for Oxfam, by working with the producers in Ethiopia and Central America and engaging in consumer education, political advocacy, and corporate engagement, it seeks to create awareness of the plight of farmers who are not rewarded for their hard work.

“Oxfam seeks to correct the imbalances of power at the root of unfair trade. This film highlights the vulnerability of coffee farmers and the disconnect that exists between poor farmers and huge profits,” said Seth Petchers, Oxfam America’s coffee programme manager.

“Black Gold illustrates the gravity of the challenges facing coffee farmers. But those challenges are not insurmountable if people get involved. We’re hoping people will watch the film and get inspired to take action,” he said.

The price of coffee has risen over the past few years, but little has changed in the farming communities. In Ethiopia, a country that depends on coffee for about 40 per cent of its export revenue, farmers make as little as three US cents for every cup of coffee sold in the US or Europe.

Meanwhile, multinational coffee corporations collectively rake in as much as $80 billion each year, according to the documentary.

Although Starbucks, Sara Lee, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, and Nestle — the world’s largest sellers of coffee — are mentioned in the film, all declined invitations to be interviewed on camera. The footage in Ethiopia was filmed in 2003 and 2005, for six weeks each time, and the film costed $760,000 to make.