According to the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences report released this week, for the first time corn overtook rice as the leading foodstuff in China. Domestic corn production grew 8% to 208 million metric tons while rice production grew just 1.6% to 204 million tons. China also imported 5.2 million metric tons of corn in 2012 – up 197.1% over the previous year, as rice imports increased 296.2% to 2.37 million metric tons. Both of these increases pushed up China’s total agriculture trade deficit by 44% to US$48.94 billion in 2012. China’s dependency on international markets reached 21.1% in 2012, up from 20.7% in 2011. China’s grain consumption has fallen to 60% of 1990 levels while meat consumption has risen 44.7% compared to 1990; poultry consumption has risen 209% and milk consumption has risen 296%.