Black Gold

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Oct 10, 2014 The Pre-Cursor Conversation To Fair-Trade Becoming A Standard Stamp On All Coffee Sold Worldwide. It Made Me Think Of All The Other Drug-Addicts (Speed, Heroin, Cocaine What-Have-U) Around The World ALSO Getting Ripped Off Because End-Users Can't Band Together & Demand A Fair Price On Product!! Hehehe..Pity Only Legal Addictions Have Legal Rights.. ;-) See more Feb 7, 2014 Well-produced, but all the images of poverty were not enough to make me forget basic macroeconomics. See more Jan 24, 2014 Interesting insight of how much the first world nation is ripping off the poor again! Please buy fair trade coffees!! See more Apr 28, 2012 Interesting look at the discrepancy between coffee price at retail and how much makes it back to the farmers. Insightful focus on Ethiopia. See more walter m @Harlequin68 Apr 13, 2011 "Black Gold" is an earnest documentary about an attempt to raise the prices paid to coffee farmers in Ethopia who are paid cents on the dollars. What the documentary does especially well is demolish the notion that paying farmers more will result in higher prices here in the West. Tadesse Meskela who manages a cooperative union has a simple idea to just eliminate the middleman and bring the product directly to markets in the West. Of course, that's not as easy as it sounds since the coffee market is controlled mostly by four multinationals, Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee, with prices being set in New York and London while the World Trade Organization works behind closed doors to the benefit of western countries. Tadesse Meskela's hard work is absolutely necessary to make the coffee farmers self-sufficient due to the dangerously low standard of living in rural Ethiopia, as there is not enough money currently for even basic services including education. But in trying to educate the viewer about its cause, the documentary dumps all of the relevant information early on, instead of forming a narrative following the coffee from harvest to brewing to drinking. Information could have been better provided throughout with a judicious use of talking heads. In fact, the approach "Black Gold" takes is haphazard at times with some strange tangents like the World Barista Championships as the documentary misses a valuable opportunity to educate when it talks to the baristas in Seattle. And sometimes a little confrontation is good for the soul See more Feb 26, 2011 An incredible documentary & eye opener. We can see the poverty and miserable conditions of the Ethiopian farmer. They hope for the same things everyone wants. Better living conditions, education, medical care and most important food to feed their families & decent wages. See more Read all reviews

Black Gold

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