HUMBOLDT, Minn. - Lester Wallenberg was digging beets Nov. 17. Digging them under, that is.

Wet field conditions this fall have forced Humboldt area farmers, including the one Wallenberg works for, to abandon some of their 2004 sugar beet fields.

American Crystal Co. officials estimate that about 10,000 sugar beet acres in the Drayton, N.D., factory district will not be harvested. Most of the acres are in Kittson County, Minn., and Pembina County, N.D.

The American Crystal Sugar harvest ended Nov. 11 after temperatures dipped into the midteens overnight, according to the Moorhead, Minn.-based cooperative's Web site. The freeze left the beets unsuitable for storage, the Web site says.

The cooperative's 2,900 shareholders across Minnesota and North Dakota harvested a total of about 488,000 acres this year, says Jeff Schweitzer, American Crystal Sugar Co. spokesman.

The 10,000 acres left unharvested in the Drayton factory district is about 6.5 percent of that district's total sugar beet acreage of 162,000, Schweitzer says. There also were 375 acres left unharvested in the Hillsboro, N.D., factory district.

American Crystal officials believe the Drayton district's abandoned acres are the most abandoned there in recent history, he says.

Tough year

"From what I've heard, it's one of the worst seasons since '59," says Randy Melaas, Pembina County, N.D., extension agent.

On the Minnesota side of the Red River, the entire sugar beet harvest was a struggle for some farmers in the Humboldt area, says Kelly Turgeon, Kittson County Farm Service Agency director in Hallock, Minn.

"In many of the fields, the trucks were pulled constantly, or beets were lifted and a cart with a four-wheel-drive tractor was used to bring the beets to the head lands of the fields," Turgeon says. "I observed beet trucks stuck up to the frame, lifters stuck. Every imaginable piece of equipment was stuck at one time or another."

"We've run into frost before, but never this much rain in the fall," says Wallenberg, a lifelong Kittson County resident.

The latest round of rain wasn't the only one that has stymied farmers. "It's a wet year," he says. "We fought it (water) all the way through."

Wallenberg was disking under 120 acres of sugar beets Nov. 17 that he had planted six months earlier. "There's no profit, that's for sure," he says.

Insurance will help

Most sugar beet farmers in Kittson County have federal crop insurance policies for their sugar beets, Turgeon says. The crop insurance, together with aid from the $200 million federal disaster bill that was passed last month, will help defray the cost of abandoning the beets.

Another consolation for growers in Kittson and Pembina counties is that November's warm weather has allowed them to till a lot more ground than they had previously expected.

"If it wasn't for (last) week, we wouldn't have been going again," Wallenberg says. "This has been a good week; it dried up quite a bit."

"We're very fortunate to get the weather we've had the last three weeks to complete necessary fall tillage work," Turgeon says. "Without that weather, we would have froze up with many acres unworked and faced prevented planting acres next spring.

"The farmers have a more positive attitude because of the tillage."

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