Black Gold

Anthropology in the World System: Reflecting on the film, "Black Gold," ) After watching the movie "Black Gold" I was amazed on how Ethiopia is affected by unfair market trading of its coffee. A key challange that anthropologist would face in traditional local-oriented ethnographic methods in studying the coffee growers is the fact that its a more localized culture in Ethiopia and being able to portray that and understand that would be hard to understand. With the developing of sorrounding countries another challenge would be to be accepted into the culture of the coffee growers. A method to understand the development of coffee as a cash crop and its problems associated with the coffee trade is to the the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow a fair trade system for the Ethiopians. The problem the coffee growers have is not the abilitiy to farm and harvest their coffee crops but to obtain a fair market price for the coffee they harvest. That is because the Coffee Growing Union was unable to obtain a good market price for their coffee to be traded and therefore was unable to provide a higher profit margin for the farmers. This low profit is forced many of the farmers to resort to farming and selling chat, a narcotic. Chat has a higher trading value than coffee for the farmers and it actually allows them to have enough food for their family, which is all they are really asking for. The farmers are not asking for an exaggerted price for their coffee beans. which happen to be of very high quality, but only for a fair price that is enough to keep food on the table for their families and keep their farms maintained for the coffee seasons