Fairtrade America Mural Reveal Party

The Sioux Falls Food Co+op is honored to be one of three recipients for this year’s Fairtrade America Mural Project.
Join us on October 11th, 2025 to celebrate months of collaboration reaching completion.

When: 10/11/2025 3pm-5pm
Where: Sioux Falls Food Co+op
Who: Fairtrade America, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and Erin Castle’s Original Artwork
LIVE MUSIC from Elsa Rae, Ben Gertner, and DJ Jaime Bravo
FOOD BY Co+op Kitchen, Taverns & Tots, and Salas Salsas
FREE to attend, all are welcome!

Joined by our friends at Terra Shepherd Boutique & Apothocary (local pros with Fairtrade practices).

Our Fairtrade America mural, a one-of-a-kind original piece of artwork by local artist Erin Castle, features a real woman farmer that grows vanilla in Madagascar for Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, a Certified Fairtrade Brand. The vanilla farmer’s name is Marie Ronette Botramisy. Marie is a member of Lafima vanilla farmers cooperative, and a lead farmer as part of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Living Income Accelerator (LIA), focusing on Regenerative Agriculture practices.

Botramisy credits the skills she has developed as a lead farmer as pivotal for managing her land more effectively and sustainably. Through trainings, she has learned how to install drainage canals to reduce runoff and preserve soil nutrients, the benefit of using organic compost on her plots, and crop rotation techniques to manage soil fertility.
She has seen vast improvement in her crop quality and lead since applying practices she learned as a lead farmer, and especially appreciates the individualized support she has received from program agronomists, who help identify obstacles specific to her own land. The LIA program also supplied her and other farmers with seed stock, a benefit which has greatly improved profitability as ongoing crisis in the vanilla market has made seeds more expensive and difficult to acquire.

Marie sees the benefits of her participation in the project as ongoing, saying “It is thanks to the support we received that our lives have taken a new turn. We are more motivated than ever to continue working hard. In addition, we identified follower farmers from within our cooperative, with whom we share our knowledge”.
Fairtrade creates a more equitable world.

Fairtrade is a way of shopping and doing business differently. It is a way of co-creating a world that prioritizes people and the planet. Our global network includes over 2 million farmers and workers, more than 2,500 businesses, and countless shoppers