Firstly, Black Gold follows
Tadesse’s attempts to develop business with coffee companies willing to work
outside the New York market. In Trieste, London and Seattle, he is successful
and is soon able to start paying his farmers a small profit which they put
towards building a school. During the story, the reader discovers many interesting
facts about coffee and the lives of Ethiopia’s coffee farmers. It ends on a
hopeful note and a reminder to all coffee drinkers to "think before you drink".
Secondly, Tadesse Meskela, head of
Oromia Coffee Farmers’ Union, an Ethiopian Co-operative which is trying to get
a fair price for the coffee produced by its members. This is a recent problem.
Before the early 1990s, the International Coffee Organization made sure that
farmers received a fair price for their coffee. But after the US left the ICO
in 1993, coffee prices were set by the New York Board of Trade. They went too
low, with the result that large coffee companies got rich while many coffee
farmers in developing countries grew poor. The World Trade Organization talks
in Mexico in 2003 were supposed to help solve this problem but ended in
failure. After this, Tadesse’s realized that the only way to help his farmers
was through the Fair Trade Movement. They would sell coffee to companies willing
to pay a fair price which would then allow them to use the Fair Trade logo on
their products.
Finally, Follow the journey of Tadesse Meskela around
the world in search of buyers for and a better price for the coffee of the
farmer working for the coffee producers’ cooperative. I witness the breakdown
of the trade talks in 2003, I see at the end of the film some glimmers of hope
that the Ethiopian coffee producers might be starting to see some of the
benefits of Tadesse’s work in creating higher revenues that can be reinvested
into the social development of one of the poorest nations on earth.
