NEKOMA (AP) - Wheat is king for Cavalier County farmers like Larry Petri, who put in his first crop 45 years ago, as an eighth-grader, to help his father.

Half the 800,000 acres of farm land in the county are planted with spring wheat, winter wheat or durum, a wheat variety used in pasta. Petri, 59, put half his 2,500 acres into wheat.

The price for spring wheat at Petri's local elevator last week was $5.60 a bushel, higher than he's ever seen it at harvest.

"The data I have looked at, for the price for 'off-the-combine' delivery - this is the highest," Jim Peterson, the marketing director for the North Dakota Wheat Commission, said Friday.

Prices are about $2 per bushel higher than normal, which translates into $30 million more in revenue to the county's 600 farmers, or $50,000 apiece. Petri is quick to point out that farmers also face higher costs of fuel, fertilizer and land.

"Usually going into harvest, you expect prices to go off 50 cents a bushel or so. But this last week, it went up two, three or four cents a day," Petri said. "It seemed like every day it went up just a hair, and that's a good sign."

Peterson sees a number of reasons for the higher prices. Bad weather has hit other big wheat growers and exporters. Canada's wheat acres are less than 15 million acres - down nearly 20 percent from last year and the lowest level since 1970 - because more farmers switched to more canola and barley, Peterson said. Ethanol-based demand has upped corn acres and cut into wheat acres.

Also, the U.S. dollar's weakness against other currencies makes U.S. wheat more affordable to buyers from Germany to Japan, Peterson said.

"Our export sales of (all) wheat are at 450 million bushels so far this year, up 80 percent from a year ago," Peterson said. He had expected a rise of only 15 percent.

"We have had four straight years of declining world wheat stocks," Peterson said. "It's just a function of usage outstripping production."

Spring wheat yields are running 40 bushels to 60 bushels per acre, well above average, Peterson said. So far, no serious quality problems are showing up.

The average price paid for spring wheat at North Dakota elevators in July was $5.55, with all premiums and discounts included, said Earl Stabenow a statistician with the USDA's agricultural statistics office in Fargo. It is still below the record May 1996 monthly average of $5.82, he said.

Petri, who started out raising pigs, chickens and cows as well as wheat 45 years ago, remembers those spring 1996 highs, and he remembers that wheat prices fell $3 within months. Much of the wheat crop still is in the field.