Black Gold

Description: Ever been astounded by the number of coffee shops on any given high street? As a society we seem to have acquired an insatiable thrist for coffee in all its wonderful forms with many coffee chains making obscene amounts of money from our caffeine addiction. Multinational coffee companies such as Starbucks now rule our highstreets and shopping malls using sometimes dubious marketing stategies to dominate this $80 billion industry. After oil, coffee is the most valuable trading commodity on planet earth. While consumers in the so called developed world continue to pay through the nose for their favorite espresso based drink, the farmers in the coffee growing nations receive such miserly renumeration for their efforts that many are being forced to abandon their coffee fields. Black Gold is a riveting documentary which follows Tedesse Maskela of the Oromia Coffee Growers Cooperative as he travels the world struggling to get farmers a fair price for the beans they grow. The movie demostrates the huge amount of power wielded by the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade. Commodity traders, the International coffee exchanges and the dealings of ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the challenges faced in the quest for a long-term solution for farmers.