This year, the National Top Ten Classic Premium Rice Competition was divided for the first time into a "non-fragrant rice group" and a "fragrant rice group," with judges selecting the top five scorers from the ten shortlisted farmers in each group. In the "non-fragrant rice group," Wu Chun-hsien, who won for Daliao District, Kaohsiung City, was the youngest farmer among them, just 37 years old. He once worked in the electronics industry at the Kaohsiung Cianjhen Export Processing Zone; after marrying, because his in-laws grew organic rice, he switched to rice farming six years ago, and he credits his quick success in winning an award to the excellent guidance of his father-in-law Chen Chia-cheng and mother-in-law Chen Lin Chin-jui.

Wu Chun-hsien's brother-in-law Chen Yi-hung (34 this year) is also remarkable: last year he likewise represented Daliao District with "Kaohsiung No. 145" in the Top Ten Classic Premium Rice Competition, and even though the fragrant rice varieties "Taoyuan No. 3 (New Fragrant Rice)" and "Tainung No. 71 (Yi-Chuan Fragrant Rice)" took eight places, he became one of only two winners who won with a non-fragrant rice (the other won with "Taikeng No. 9"). (For related coverage, see "Classic Premium Rice: Behind-the-Scenes Secrets! The Rivalry of Taro-Fragrant Rice")

After Losing Their Land to Typhoon Morakot, the Chen Family Kept Fighting

For this pair of "sixth-graders" (people born in the 1970s) in the rice world to win the Top Ten Classic Premium Rice honor two years in a row, no one was happier than their parents, Chen Chia-cheng and Chen Lin Chin-jui. The Chen family is famous in the rice-farming world of the Kaohsiung area. Chen Chia-cheng, under the guidance of the Kaohsiung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, was one of the earliest few farmers to practice organic rice farming; Chen Lin Chin-jui, even before her son, won the Top Ten Classic Premium Rice honor back in 2007. Despite these glorious achievements, few people know that the Chen family were also victims of Typhoon Morakot. (For related coverage, see Breeze Market's "Post-Disaster Report on the Fengshan Organic Rice Production and Marketing Group")

Chen Lin Chin-jui said that more than twenty years ago, when her husband was spraying pesticide on the rice, he accidentally inhaled too much and was poisoned, rushed to hospital for emergency treatment, and barely came back from the brink of death. From then on, the Chen family abandoned pesticides and switched to organic agriculture. At the time, the Kaohsiung Agricultural Research and Extension Station had just begun promoting organic rice, and her husband Chen Chia-cheng joined the trial planting, learning bit by bit from the experts. In 1996 they established the first Fengshan Organic Rice Production and Marketing Group, and gradually planted organic rice in Daliao and Shanlin and other places, with the planted area at its peak totaling as much as about 20 hectares.

But Typhoon Morakot in 2009 dealt a severe blow to the Chen family's organic rice fields. Their 13 hectares of organic rice fields on river-land in Daliao District, the fruit of 15 years of effort, were destroyed by the floodwaters and filled with sand, gravel and driftwood; the 8 hectares of organic fields they leased from Taiwan Sugar Corporation in the Shanlin Organic Special Zone, though less damaged, were, as post-Morakot reconstruction work got underway, forcibly allocated by the Reconstruction Council to the Yonglin Education and Charity Foundation as land for the "Yongling Organic Farm," wiping out more than 6 years of effort.

Chen Lin Chin-jui said that after Typhoon Morakot, facing years of hard work gone down the drain, she was once at a loss. But thinking of how long they had devoted themselves to organic agriculture, she was unwilling to give up, and also hoped the next generation could carry on organic farming. They wiped away their tears and rebuilt, successively leasing 11 hectares of land from Taiwan Sugar Corporation to resume planting organic rice. Their son Chen Yi-hung, who had originally worked in medical administration and lived as a part-time farmer, became a full-time farmer after Typhoon Morakot, and the whole family worked together with one heart, finally winning the Top Ten Classic Premium Rice Competition again last year, and this year their son-in-law Wu Chun-hsien continued the win.

MBA Holder Lai Cheng-lin Grows Premium Rice Next Door to Uncle Kun-pin

In the fragrant rice group, the Top Ten Classic Premium Rice winner representing Houbi District, Tainan City, the 33-year-old Lai Cheng-lin, was also one of the focuses of attention at the venue; he won with "Tainung No. 71 (Yi-Chuan Fragrant Rice)." Bearing the halo of a graduate of Soochow University's Graduate Institute of Business Administration, Lai Cheng-lin, who comes from a farming family, humbly said he was not good at growing rice from the start. Although he has only six years of farming experience, two years ago when he took part in a township competition he even placed last, but after guidance from experts at the Tainan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station and frequent exchanges with "Uncle Kun-pin," the winner of the fourth National Grand Champion Rice, he finally won in one fell swoop this year.