Documentary shows dark side of coffee industry

Asiliyah Salaam
Contributing Writer

Two billion cups of coffee are consumed each day, globally. Coffee sales have increased since 1990 from $30 billion to $80 billion a year. Coffee is second only to petroleum as the most actively traded commodity. The coffee industry is hot.

These statistics were given in the 2006 documentary titled “Black Gold.” The film was presented by the Ethiopian Students Alliance for Education Advancement last Friday.

Liya Abebe, president of the ESAEA, said her organization showed the film because she wants the “students to see what is actually going on in the coffee industry.”

In their documentary “Black Gold,” British filmmakers Marc and Nick Frances revealed that not everyone in the coffee industry benefits equally from the profits coffee generate. According to the film, a kilogram of coffee will brew up about $230 worth of sales, but the Ethiopian farmer who grew the coffee will be paid an equivalent of around 23 cents for each kilogram.

The documentary suggests two main reasons for this disparity. In the early 1990s the price of coffee plummeted when the market was flooded with a cheaper coffee species from farmers outside of Africa. Ethiopian farmers receive only minimum compensation for their work, even when coffee prices rise.

“People only see the roasters, or coffee shops, but the industry is huge. Hard work from the Ethiopian farmers has a lot to do with it,” Abebe said.

Most of the profits are kept by giant coffee companies ‐ Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, Sara Lee and Starbucks.

Tamiru Degefa, co-founder, chairman of the board and COO of Abol Coffee, an Ethiopian coffee importing business, gave a brief talk to a packed auditorium.

He said that the surge in supply made coffee prices plummet so low that farmers in countries like Ethiopia could not compete. According to Degefa, global coffee prices had hit a 30-year low by 2001, forcing 25 million coffee farmers and families into poverty.

“This is a huge global crisis,” said Abebe. She also said if students wish to help the farmers of Ethiopia, the first step is to become aware, to understand what is happening.

Abebe hopes that the next time the students sit down to have a cup of morning coffee, they stop and wonder, “Whose struggle brought this coffee to me? Who’s getting the lion’s share of the profits?”

The film focuses on Ethiopia as the birthplace of coffee, where it has remained the most important cash crop for hundreds of years.

“Black Gold” follows the struggles of Tadesse Meskela, general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union (OCFCU) that represents 74,000 Ethiopian farmers. He formed the OCFCU in 1999 to eliminate middleman costs and to improve the farmers’ livelihood.

Meskela looks for buyers around the world who will pay a fair price for the high quality coffee grown by the farmers he represents and avoid low-priced coffee offered by the New York Board of Trade.

The South End (Students Newspaper of Wayne State University)