Yesterday, I went to the Naro in Ghent and watched a really interesting documentary called "Black Gold". This documentary examined a negative development of globalization, the global- coffee trade and explained how multinational companies, as Starbucks, Kraft and Nestle for example, exploit coffee farmers in Ethopia, one of the poorest countries in the world and make coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil... The documentary also focused on an Ethopian initiative, a coorparative of thousands of common farmers, to sell their coffee as a fair trade-product and thereby improving their own situation by building a better infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc.) and changing their country's future...
The issue that was raised in the documentary strongly reminded me of Joseph E. Stiglitz's article "Global Discontents", in which Stiglitz argues that the distribution of the globalization's benefits, in the sense of global trade, is the biggest problem of globalization. The question he comes up with is, "How it has been managed?" and what we have to change in order to reduce poverty and creat a better environment...
One scene from the documentary gave some kind of answer to Stiglitz 's request, because by paying the farmer only a few Dirs more, the farmers could send their children to school and are even able to build a better infrastructure...
And we as the consumers can make the first step by being up to spending probably a little more for a fair trade-product ?!?
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