Black Gold
I had the good fortune to be invited to a free screening of the coffee trade documentary Black Gold last night. Very powerful - once you see it you'll never want to buy coffee that isn't fair trade again.
I have to say though, I found it a bit disconcerting that a number of people in the audience saw fit to tsk tsk at every scene of poverty, and snicker at every scene of western coffee consumption. I will make the generous assumption that these people *never* go to starbucks and *always* buy fair trade coffee. Is that enough to transmute a sense of responsibility into a sense of righteousness? It's easy to buy coffee that costs a bit more and call it a day. Before we tsk or snicker we should also give of ourselves - our time and talent as well as our money - to improve the situations we abhor.
By the way, tying real-world coffee bean pricing to commodity trading is an artificial construct. When enough consumers vote with their dollars for fair trade coffee, that construct will collapse. If you can't find it in your local store, you can buy fair trade coffee online.
And also, Yirgacheffe is the bomb!!!
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In related news, this interesting bit was in The Guardian on Jan29:
"The Ethiopian government, keen to get a much better price for a commodity that makes up the bulk of its exports, has been trying to trademark its three prized coffee brands. And this is where Starbucks' benevolence turns sour.
Although Starbucks only buys about 2% of its coffee from Ethiopia - accounting for only $6-8m of the country's $400m annual exports - it has used its muscle within the National Coffee Association of America to block Addis Ababa's trademarking attempts, as revealed by the Guardian in October.
Ron Layton, a Washington-based lawyer with Light Years IP who is advising the Ethiopians, says successful trademarking could add $88m a year to Ethiopia's export earnings. He says Europe, Japan and Canada have already registered the trademarks and the US trademark office could do so were it not for Starbucks' opposition. 'Starbucks clearly fears that if Ethiopia succeeds, other countries will try and follow and it will cost them money. They have even threatened to stop buying Ethiopian coffee, but that would not matter since they buy so little anyway.'"
For those of you who are interested in the issue of Fair trade, there is a powerful documentary out called “Black Gold,” that documents the lives of Ethiopian coffee farmers and clearly demonstrates why all of us should be asking for Fair Trade coffee. The film was recently released in the theater but is now available to the public on DVD via California Newsreel. You can read more about the documentary or pick up a copy of it here at http://newsreel.org/
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