大概是本学期最后一篇作业用影评。所以忍不住多说两句，即使知道且看完这部纪录片的人全中国也屈指可数。
亚的斯亚贝巴，埃塞俄比亚；罗马，意大利；西雅图，美国；日内瓦，瑞士。这些城市，连起来串成的是一条微妙的产业链，黑色的金子沉默地流淌着。终于有一天你会发现，你的咖啡尝起来再也不会是同样的味道。
In the movie of Black Gold, the entire coffee production line involves not only the coffee farmers and multinational businesses. It is, nonetheless, the gigantic industry involving countless of people. Coffee growers, coffee workers, coffee suppliers, coffee contractors, multinational companies, coffee managers, coffee artists, daily consumers and so on are compositions in this black gold empire.
Tadesse Meskela is dedicated himself in the elimination of the price differentiations between coffee suppliers—farmers and the coffee exporters—multinationals by vacuuming gaps of the chains in the commodity process.
The situation in Ethiopia is very disturbing from the standpoint of the western society. 15 million people in Ethiopia rely on the coffee production for a living, and 67% Ethiopia export is coffee. However, in the capital of the poorest country in the world, Addis Ababa, people are famishing from poverty. In fact, 7 million people are dependent on emergency food everyday. They are hardly fed than receiving proper medical care and education. In the film, the farmers are accusing the low price of the coffee not out of the greediness, but the basic instinct of feeding one’s family and sending one’s children to proper-built school for higher education. The only hope for them to get away from their inherited fate of struggling for food relies on the negotiation between coffee exporters and the multinational merchandise for higher prices.
The cause of the price differences is simple and well known. Since the international coffee agreement became effective in the 1980s, the price has fallen and the nowadays 80 cups of coffee is made from one kilo of coffee beans. Disturbingly, the retail price of one kilo of coffee beans is one hundred times lower than its retail price as in cups of coffee drinks in western world. The monopoly market controls the high prices by exploiting the poor farmers.
There are four multinationals dominating the world coffee market. In the eye of impoverished farmers, they represent the idea of stratification and exploitation. However, the multinationals, like their other relatives born in the time of globalization, have been feeding millions of people and supporting millions of people’s dreams over decades. For instance, the coffee artists in the competition may not notice their ingredients came from an Ethiopian family working 16 hours per day for minimal earnings. They make fantastic tasting coffee and win trophies. And to the manager from the first Starbucks in Seattle, she works so hard for a company that buys coffee beans cheaply from starving African farmers and sells them after roasting for at least 3 dollars per cup. Her dream is not impairing any others’ happiness.
The industry chain isn’t over. It also includes people in Wall Street, where every single commodity price is determined. And the delegates in the WTO, bargaining for their interests, exemplify a different view of the coffee industry. WTO, as one of the American delegates put as “an organization of power-based”, also plays an important role of international imperialism.
The documentary suggests more than one-side of the story for us, and this is approximately the universal question raised to everyone that lives in the global economy. Who actually keep the black gold throughout the entire chain of industry?
