Farmers saw the high prices for corn and switched even more acreage to the crop this year than experts first predicted.

The U.S. Agriculture Department reported today that farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn this year, 19 percent more than last year and 3 percent more than the USDA had projected in March.


This is the most corn that U.S. farmers have planted since 1944.

In turn farmers planted fewer acres of soybeans in the Midwest and cotton in the South.

Iowa growers followed the trend, planting an estimated 14.3 million acres of corn this year, 400,000 acres above the March projection and 1.7 million more acres than they planted a year ago.

Soybean acreage in Iowa fell from 10.2 million in 2006 to 8.8 million this year.

Corn prices shot up last year, driven by the demand for grain to make fuel ethanol.