Screening: Black Gold

As westerners enjoy designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee-growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. This eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar coffee industry traces one man’s fight for a fair price.
 
The global coffee industry is worth $80 billion a year and raw coffee is the world’s second most valuable trading commodity after oil. The price paid to farmers however is so low that some have been forced to abandon their coffee fields altogether.
 
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.
 
Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a fair deal for his farmers.

Directors: Nick and Mark Francis

See trailer here