THOMPSON (AP) - Farmers here say a cool planting season, high fuel prices and low market prices bring little hope for a good year.

"Farmers are not very upbeat about this year. Our overhead expenses continue to go up, and our prices are not matching," said Ken Nichols, a Grand Forks County extension agent.

"Fertilizer is really high. Fuel is really high, and prices aren't that good," said Bill West, a Thompson farmer. He was filling his drill with wheat seed in a field west of town on Thursday.

The price of diesel fuel in the Midwest averaged $2.23 per gallon on Monday, 56 cents a gallon higher than last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

The average price of wheat on Thursday was $3.61 per bushel, 27 cents lower than last year, a survey of area elevators showed.

"It looks like a very challenging year," Nichols said.

The cool spring temperatures haven't done anything to make farmers more optimistic.

"As cold as it is right now, you worry about if it's going to be a lot like last year," West said.

West's neighbor, Jerry Fortin, was unfazed by the snow that pelted his tractor as he seeded wheat Thursday morning.

"Just something different," Fortin said as he stepped out of his tractor cab dressed in shirt sleeves. Things were different when he started farming about 40 years ago, when many tractors weren't equipped with cabs, he said.

"We had parkas," he said.

The 2004 growing season was fraught from beginning to end with production problems resulting from unseasonably cool temperatures. The season began with slow germination of seeds and ended with an early frost that damaged or destroyed many immature row crops.

"The wheat was good and everything else was poor," said West, who also grows soybeans and sunflowers.

The 2004 crop season still is fresh in many farmers' minds, Nichols said.

"The odds are it will be warmer than last year," Nichols said.

Despite the cool week, "right now as far as planting, we're off to a pretty good start," Nichols said.

Planting progress in North Dakota was about a week ahead of schedule, the North Dakota Agricultural Statistics Service said. The state's farmers had planted 29 percent of the spring wheat crop, 12 percent more than the five-year average.