The Motivations Behind... Part 2

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They also got to meet with the charismatic Tadesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union. A friendly, yet incredibly serious man, Tadesses co-op helps about 74,000 individual coffee farmers (and growing!) bargain for a fair price for their commodity. Tadesse is a focal point of the film because of his deep level of knowledge about the coffee business. He regularly tours many different places, from coffee farms to the grocery stores he visits when at international trade shows.

Black Gold really begins at the farms of Tadesses co-op deep in southern Ethiopia. One of the most memorable scenes shows Tadesse surrounded by several of the coffee growers who belong to his co-op organization. He asks them how much they would pay for a cup of their own high-quality, freshly roasted and ground coffee. They quote him a number, which he then counters by telling them how much an equivalent cup of coffee is sold for in the West. The coffee growers scoff in near disbelief when they learn one cup of coffee in the West sold for more (much, much more) than one kilo of their beans.

Coffee beans ripe on the tree

Black Gold paints a sobering illustration of the difficult life on a farm in a third world country; there is no safety net such as unemployment insurance. A bad harvest year, a slump in coffee prices, or a market glut can mean starvation, hardship and maybe even death for a coffee farmer. Even when coffee sales are enough for farmers and their families to eke out a living, they still may not be able to afford sending their children to school.

Unlike education in the US, education in Ethiopia is not free or compulsory. If a coffee farmer wants to send his children to school, it comes out of their pocket. When business has been bad, education is one of the first expenses a farmer cuts. In a very real way, this is the brutal face of an unregulated free market.