Agri.taobao.com, the organic food channel of Hangzhou-based C2C & B2C e-commerce site Taobao, has officially gone online. According to Taobao, the channel is now open after a year of preparations and will be centered on transactions involving organic food products. Products include fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry and eggs, grain, oil, and other non-staple foodstuffs. To date, over 1,000 farms have joined the channel.

An informed insider recently reported that Taobao plans to collaborate with participating farms for the launch of the "Real Farm Rental Project," by which farms will rent plots of their own land out to Taobao users such that they can experience the planting process themselves. The farms will manage users' plots and crops as well as provide shipping, and users can either eat the harvested fruits and vegetables or sell them on Taobao's C2C platform.