Online voting in the golden verse contest for “Love to use domestic agricultural, fishery and animal products” being held to encourage “local production, local consumption” ended on April 6. The Council of Agriculture (COA) conducted the the semi-final assessment in the morning on April 7 and following enthusiastic discussions “Enjoy fresh local products” and “Good Formosan ingredients are cheap and will put you at ease” were judged as the winning verses in the social group and student group respectively, while “Good grain resources Godsend Taiwan,” a verse competing in the social group, won the online voting.

The COA noted that the golden verse contest for “Love to use domestic agricultural, fishery and animal products” and online voting had attracted 11,370 competing verses and 126,747 casted votes respectively. The Council thanked the enthusiastic responses from the society and COA Minister Wu-hsiung Chen will confer prizes in the awards ceremony scheduled to be held in the morning on April 12. The winning verses will be used in appropriate forms in future activities promoting domestic agricultural, fishery and animal products. The Council will also sponsor a subsequent series of “Local production, local consumption” marketing activities and invite people throughout the country to take action in support of Taiwan agriculture.

When online voting in the contest ended at midnight on April 6, the COA invited experts to conduct the professional semi-final assessment the next morning. Winners were determined by their total scores of which semi-final assessment accounted for 60% and online voting 40%. Three winners and five excellent verses were chosen from the social group and student group respectively to be awarded. The winner who wrote “Enjoy fresh local products” explained that he used “enjoy fresh” to mean local people should think first of enjoying freshly produced Taiwan agricultural, fishery and animal products with excellent quality and remind consumers to think first of buying local farm produce when they are shopping. The double meaning met with the unanimous approval of the judging panel and the verse won the first prize in the social group since the votes it received in online voting gave it the highest total score. “Good Formosan ingredients are cheap and will put you at ease” received the highest votes in online voting and the judging panel granted it the first prize in the student group due to its mixed Mandarin and Taiwanese rhymes and easy-to-understand content.

The COA said since the winning verses were chosen it will begin contacting the winners. Moreover, ten writers of competing verses and 100 people who took part in the online voting will receive their prizes after being selected by the computer random numbers during the April 12 awards ceremony and the Council will send them their prizes immediately for all awardees to enjoy Taiwan agricultural, fishery and animal products with the best quality as soon as possible. (2011-04-07 )