Black Gold – an extraordinary documentary about coffee
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Print
Email
Tweet This!Save to Favorites
Recommend on Google+
Black Gold – an extraordinary documentary about coffee As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, Black Gold traces one man's fight for a fair price.’ Black Gold is a 78-minute documentary feature from Mark and Nick Francis which provides an extraordinary vivid and remarkable insight into the lives and challenges facing coffee farmers in Ethiopia. These producers supply some of the finest coffee in the world but who are struggling to survive because of the obscenely low prices they get from multinational coffee exporters and roasters. For a £2 tall latte, less than 2 pence goes to the grower – a pitiful return for the creator of the raw coffee beans that we turn into a multi-billion dollar pound lifestyle industry at retail level. The film offers economics students so much – the trading on the floor of the New York Board of Trade Exchange, the monopsony power of the multinational coffee buyers bidding for coffee in an Ethiopian auction house; how a simple coffee bean can have value added to it to generate the billions of pounds of profits enjoyed by shareholders in Starbucks; we understand more of the role of incentives in allocating resources - many Ethiopian coffee farmers are ploughing under their coffee trees and planting - instead – narcotics provide a better price. In the film, we follow the journey of Tadesse Meskela around the world in search of buyers for and a better price for the coffee of the farmer working for the coffee producers’ cooperative. We witness the breakdown of the trade talks in 2003, we see at the end of the film some glimmers of hope that the Ethiopian coffee producers might be starting to see some of the benefits of Tadesse’s work in creating higher revenues that can be reinvested into the social development of one of the poorest nations on earth.
blog comments powered by Disqus
Unit 1 Micro: Winning the War on Deforestation [5 Feb 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Focus on China - Inflation [26 Jan 2012]
Unit1 Micro: Can a minimum wage create jobs? [16 Jan 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Look Upwards to Find the next Downturn [15 Jan 2012]
Economics at the Movies - Freakonomics [9 Jan 2012]
Unit 4 Macro: Natural Disasters and their Economic Impact [7 Jan 2012]
Unit 1 Micro: Externalities from Metal Theft [2 Jan 2012]
Unit 1 Micro: Low Cost Airlines Beat the Recession [1 Jan 2012]
Unit 1 Micro: Biomass Subsidies and Timber Prices [30 Dec 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: The UK Housing Market in 2011 [26 Dec 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Sub Normal Profits - BP Leaves the Solar Industry [21 Dec 2011]
Economics of Deforestation [20 Dec 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Oligopoly and Duopoly in Bus Markets [20 Dec 2011]
Prezi on Information Failures [20 Dec 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: Long Term Unemployment - A Human Story [15 Dec 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: Will a Youth Jobs Subsidy Work? [30 Nov 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Tacit Collusion in the Supermarket [27 Nov 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: 50 Years since the end of the Max Wage in Football [23 Nov 2011]
Pasty Prices - Something to Chew Over [19 Nov 2011]
LSE lecture: Darwin economy [13 Nov 2011]
AS Macro: The State of British Business [13 Nov 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: Video Clips on Unemployment [6 Nov 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Unilever hit by rising costs [6 Nov 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Impulses to Change Management Models [5 Nov 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Examples of Price Discrimination in Action [31 Oct 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: UK Executive Pay - All in it Together? [29 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Is the Sun Dipping on Solar Subsidies? [27 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Economists attack food price speculation [24 Oct 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Ofcom gives stamp of approval for flexible pricing in mail [21 Oct 2011]
Unit 4 Macro: World Food Day [16 Oct 2011]
Can the “invisible hand” solve Africa’s poverty? [13 Oct 2011]
So many economic concepts in one article - Indian tomato production. [11 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Copper prices and a copper crime wave [10 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Producing Coffee - Kenya in Pictures [4 Oct 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Monospony Power and Low Wages in Care Homes [3 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Homework Assignment on Market Prices [2 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: The Supply and Demand Rap! [28 Sep 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Exercise on Equilibrium Market Prices [27 Sep 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Drink Driving and Government Intervention [26 Sep 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Exercise on Market Supply [26 Sep 2011]
Unit 4 Macro: IMF Flags up Risks of Double Dip [20 Sep 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: Economic Growth and Inequality [14 Sep 2011]
Study Note - What is Macroeconomics? [13 Sep 2011]
50% tax rates - Chuck it George [7 Sep 2011]
Starter Activity: Health Economics [1 Sep 2011]
Monetary Policy Roundtable [25 Jul 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Cotton Prices and the Retail Price of Clothing [13 Jul 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Economics of Volatile Corn Prices [12 Jul 2011]
Zondle Game: 10 Question Quiz about OPEC [11 Jul 2011]
Unit 4 Macro: Dangers of High Inflation [11 Jul 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: Reducing Unemployment after a Recession [11 Jul 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Oligopsony - Dairy Losses Drive Farmers from the Fields [10 Jul 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: FirstBuy, Affordability and Effective Demand in Property [10 Jul 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: High price of petrol drains demand [9 Jul 2011]
Glastonbury, rain, mud, abandoned tents and negative externalities. [4 Jul 2011]
AS Micro: Fears over a century of hunger [22 Jun 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Are carbon taxes ineffective? [20 Jun 2011]
AQA ECON4 Context [20 Jun 2011]
Poor Economics - Esther Duflo at the LSE [3 Jun 2011]
Macro Revision: Putting Things in Context [25 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Supply-Side Policies [25 May 2011]
AQA Macro: Remember to revise inflation [25 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Demand Pull Inflation [24 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Deflation [24 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Cost Push Inflation [24 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Inflation [24 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Recession [23 May 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: The Output Gap [23 May 2011]
Revision notes on unemployment [22 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Competition Policy [20 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Oligopoly and Collusion [20 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Oligopoly [20 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Price Discrimination [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Entry Barriers in Markets [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Monopsony Power in Markets [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: The Importance of Profit [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Market Structure, Conduct & Performance [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: High and Low Marginal Cost Products [19 May 2011]
Super-cooperators and Game Theory [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Consequences of Price Discrimination [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Examples of Price Discrimination [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Perfect Competition [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Competition and Efficiency [19 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Innovation Efficiency and Welfare [18 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Ownership and Control in Modern Businesses [18 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Moving Away from Profit Max [18 May 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Diseconomies of Scale [18 May 2011]
UK Economy Update: What Mervyn Said [11 May 2011]
AS Micro: What´s really behind the oil price rise? [10 May 2011]
Interest Rates Held at 0.5% once again [5 May 2011]
Dominos Pizza turns to Behavioural Economics [5 May 2011]
AS Micro: Commodity Prices [5 May 2011]
AS Macro: Extended House Price Deflation? [5 May 2011]
AS Micro: Rising Global Food Prices [2 May 2011]
A2 Micro: EU Aviation - State Aid and State Ownership [28 Apr 2011]
AS Micro: Mock Exam Question on Sugar Prices [28 Apr 2011]
Wiki Revision: A to Z on Monopoly [23 Apr 2011]
AS Micro: Importance of Elasticity of Supply [23 Apr 2011]
A2 Micro: Changes in Costs and Profits [23 Apr 2011]
AS Micro Revision: Public and Private Goods [21 Apr 2011]
ECONOMICS TEACHER RESOURCE NEWSLETTER
Join over 6,000 other Economics Teachers in the UK and around the world who receive the tutor2u regular Economics Resource Email Newsletter. Get special offers, first news of latest resources, teaching ideas, conferences and workshops + loads of great ideas for teaching economics from our blog authors.
