BLACK GOLD – AN ALTERNATIVE LOOK

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This article is a mini review of the film 'Black Gold', and a discussion of my thoughts and feelings provoked both by seeing the movie, and my recent attendance at a question and answer with one of the producers of the film and some local "relevant people".

I've been lucky enough to see this film a few times and the things I love most about it are, how beautifully it is put together, and that it is talking about coffee. For me, coffee doesn't feature prominently enough in the public eye. I don't mean advertising or the very public physical presence of big coffee shop chains, but where coffee comes from; that it's a crop grown on trees, and that instant coffee doesn't come from a different type of bush than ground coffee!

The film tracks the life of a member of a farmers' co-operative, whose role is to help farmers and buyers to get together, with the aim of achieving a higher price for the coffee.  Incidentally, I have read many reviews of this movie that incorrectly describe the subject of the film as a farmer. Even the director referred to him as such. The story itself is very moving, pulling at every heart-string as the subject tries to raise the price that farmers from his co-operative receive for their coffee, and he's doing a good job too.

So, it's a good story that is saying everything that it should, right?  Well not quite. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things I don't like about this film.

So where do I start?  With the aim of the film perhaps. In simple terms, the film-makers seek to demonstrate how little income farmers receive for their coffee, how that may be improved by fair trade and who the bad guys are, who are paying so little for the coffee they receive, with Starbucks used as an example.

I particularly didn't like the way Starbucks was singled out for attack, whilst the 'big four' of the coffee industry, Proctor & Gamble, Sara Lee, Nestle and Kraft, were not subjected to the same treatment, even though they are arguably bigger culprits. When I asked Nick, the producer, about this at the Q&A session he said he didn't think the consumer would "get" who the big four were in relation to the point, but that they would be able to relate the issue to Starbucks which has a prominent public presence.

Okay, so the objective of the film-makers was to highlight the issue, not to educate as to who might be the biggest offenders, but is it fair to use a convenient example based on perceived public recognition alone?  I don't think so. It might be argued that as soon as names were mentioned, with it came a responsibility to disclose the main players in order to maintain perspective. The audience would surely then be better equipped to understand the situation.

I'm no fan of the 'big green' (Starbucks). For me its marketing is over the top, its roast style is not to my taste, and it sells milk drinks - not coffee. But the handling and treatment of Starbucks in this film is clearly unfair. There are other, much bigger, offenders in the industry that really do deserve this kind of treatment. Starbucks is an easy target that's visible in the public eye, and it's a lazy way of making a point, but compared to most large roasters (and Starbucks is one of the smallest when it comes to big roasters) it does pay a higher price for its coffee than its peers.

In my opinion, this film is lazy, nearsighted and clearly aimed at the 'green' lobby and/or the person who knows nothing at all about the coffee industry. It makes no attempt to educate or offer a balanced story. It had a preprepared message from the beginning and it wasn't going to let a good story get in the way.

It is well known that I am not a fan of the fair trade movement. I want a higher price for the farmer; much higher than the $1.26 per lb that fair trade promises to pay. What is fair about the farmers having just enough income to live on? What is fair about buyers paying a charitable subsidy for a product that has no quality checks at all along the way? Is it fair to the farmer to pay a subsidy that, in the long term, is not sustainable once consumer demand for fair trade labelling moves on to the next fad that the collective global social conscience perceives to be making a difference?  After all, we have already made poverty history then moved on to global warming and carbon footprints. What of those left behind?

The "relevant" people on the panel were a representative for the Co-op supermarket (to be fair they sponsored the screening), a member of Wolverhampton Fair Trade Council and the local MP.  There wasn't a coffee producer in sight, not a coffee roaster nor a coffee retailer. I'm not counting the Co-op as a coffee retailer as it is a general grocer, not a specialist. The whole panel was fair trade orientated. There was no-one from the speciality coffee industry, no-one with direct relationships paying above fair trade prices for coffee. That might have detracted from the filmmakers' message. It may have left the audience thinking that the film portrayed an unbalanced view. It might have shown that there is a way other than fair trade.

The Co-op guy waved two jars of coffee at the audience; instant coffee of course. He proudly told us that the farmer would get 25% more income from the one being waved more fervently than he would receive from the other.  I didn't have the fight to tell him that was probably wrong. You see, instant coffee being sold at the moment was probably harvested around twelve months ago. A year ago the markets were a little crazy for a while and went above the fair trade price, so people selling to market got more for their coffee than those tied into fair trade.  Now the example is a little harsh but it happened and is real. He didn't say how much per jar they got and how much extra the jars were, but I know those answers, and they are not good news.

The MP went on to tell me that it is morally wrong to drink coffee that doesn't have a fair trade label on it. I personally think it is morally wrong to aim to pay a price that keeps someone on the edge of poverty and isn't sustainable, but we all have opinions.

The fair trade guy proudly described all the work that has gone into making Wolverhampton a fair trade city, and how the film was justification for this work. He didn't tell me what difference the fair trade city made to the farmer, but I do know that local council buildings are tied in and cannot now pay more for their coffee than the fair trade price. Not even if they wanted to give the farmer lots more money.  What if the coffee market sees a general price increase? What of the farmers tied in at the old price for their next crop with no mechanism to ensure they receive the new higher market rate? Perhaps the fair trade city could then be proud that, at the expense of the farmer, they pay so little for their coffee compared to everyone else.

If this film truly wanted to make a difference then it needed to focus on the huge amount of cheap coffee that the big four, Proctor & Gamble, Sara Lee, Nestle and Kraft, demand and the price they pay for it, then consider the speciality market method as an alternative that could make a difference and is fairer than fair trade. Instead, the film viciously snipes and digs at the pomp of the speciality market with a poorly considered ignorance, demonstrating a total lack of understanding as to how that same ceremony and the associated coverage brings fairer prices for the farmer. No attempt was made to correlate the income potential to farmers from direct relationships in comparison to fair trade or the big four.

The filmmakers sought to ridicule with images inferring a culture of those in the speciality industry plumping their feathers, and attempted to offset that by telling the audience to look at the poor farmer in comparison. There is a clip that demonstrates this so well, where they cut to the Barista Championships and Sammy Piccolo from 49th Parallel Roasters in Canada. It's just before Sammy was due to go on and he was hyped up. I mean really hyped up. Sammy had worked all year for that moment and he was just about to go on stage and do his work, and the way the filmmaker portrayed it made Sammy look so bad. Then again, the filmmaker intended it to. These were meant to be the bad guys after all. I know Sammy, and I know a lot about the company he owns with his brothers.  No-one pays more for their coffee in the world. No-one works harder to raise the quality standards than their company. They do much more in these areas than any fair trade brand ever could. I spoke to one of the people watching the film afterwards and he asked what I thought. I told him this story and he exclaimed "Wow, I thought he was horrible and not a nice person. If you hadn't told me that, I'd have never have known."  Is this fair and balanced?  Is it raising awareness or misleading the viewer?

My arguments against this film could be construed as being very basic, lacking in some quarters and without market substance. Then again so can the opinions portrayed in the film. You can only fight fire with fire, and my points are made using facts, whilst the filmmakers seem to make theirs by ignoring them. I understand there are some occasions when people do need to pay fair trade prices. Not everything can be speciality, and it is a very tiny segment of the world market, but so is Starbucks small in the overall scheme of things and that didn't matter to the filmmakers. My point is that the speciality market brings some good ideas and offers the farmer a fair price for his coffee. To ignore everything apart from fair trade seems to me to be aiming too low, if the filmmakers truly wish to highlight the plight of farmers with a view to instigating any real improvement.

To summarise, for me, the film failed to hold the story together.  Instead, the filmmakers chose to flit from subject to subject, generally focussing on the most emotionally charged points, in an apparent attempt to get their fair trade message home to the audience.

It seems clear that before a single reel of film had been shot, the directors had a pre-conceived message that they wanted to convey. This film may have been shot in Ethiopia, but it was very much made in the minds of the filmmakers. The core issue of fair trade was always going to grab the popular vote with the portrayal that was chosen. This film is not a documentary about the coffee trade in Ethiopia, but a statement of a western perception of coffee in third word countries. Instead of making a challenging film looking at the big four, the coffee shop chains and the good news story of speciality coffee, the filmmakers chose to take the narrow perspective of commodity coffee.

It made the decision to hit big targets, make broad generalisations and not look at the real positives happening at many growing origins (and I'm not talking about fair trade here), that are sustainable and not based around a charity idea, or on a premium for premium's sake. Coffee is a very complex industry, and 'Black and Gold' goes for the lowest common denominator in making the statement that fair trade is the only way to guarantee a fair price, which in my opinion is nonsense.

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