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The final report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the 2009 corn harvest is one for the record books.

Despite poor planting conditions, a cool, wet growing season, and an abysmal harvest that still sees corn standing in fields, American farmers shattered records for both yield per acre and total production.

In the January Crop Production report, released Jan. 12, USDA estimates farmers averaged 165.2 bushels of corn per acres; up from its previous estimate of 162.9 and shattering the previous record of 160.4 in 2004.

Average yields are more than 11 bushels per acre higher, than last year’s average yield. This record yield helped produce the largest corn crop ever at 13.2 billion bushels.

"The productivity of America’s farmers continues to amaze us all," said Adrian Schulze of the Blanco County Farm Bureau. "Despite unfavorable weather conditions from start to finish, farmers exceeded the market demand of corn to produce food, feed, and fuel."

The record 2009 crop was produced on 7 million fewer acres than were required to produce the second-largest crop on record (13.0 billion bushels) in 2007.

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Such productivity gains undermine claims that U.S. biofuel production will require new lands in other nations.

"There can be no question that American farmers have both the capability and the can-do attitude to feed the world while simultaneously helping reduce our nation’s reliance on imported oil," Schulze said.

Despite raising total production and yield numbers, USDA left demand for all sectors, save feed use, unchanged.

For ethanol, USDA is estimating 4.2 billion bushels of demand for the marketing year Sept. 1, 2009 to Aug. 31, 2010. That is enough to produce 11.7 billion gallons of ethanol based on industry ethanol yield averages.

For calendar year 2009, the U.S. is expected to produce 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol and more than 30 million metric tons of livestock feed from 3.8 billion bushels of corn.