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Although the final report detailing prevent plant acres across the state won't be out for another two weeks, preliminary results from the state FSA office estimate that approximately 2 million, or about 10 percent of cropland in the state, was unable to be planted this year.

Earlier estimates this spring had prevent plant acres pegged at 3 million.

"We're still crunching numbers but it looks like this year will be the second or third highest on record," said Aaron Krauter, state FSA director.

Since records began in 1994, the highest number of prevent plant acres occurred in 1999 when 3.9 million acres were unable to be seeded.

While nearly every area of the state was affected to some degree only four counties in the state have yet to report prevent plant acres Krauter said the figures are starting to reveal hard-hit areas.

"We're beginning to see a northeast to southeast pattern with the prevent plant acres. The northeast part of the state like Cavalier, Ramsey and Pembina (counties) are showing a lot of prevented acres and it seems to trail off as you go southeast."

To date, 14 percent of cropland in Pembina County 84,000 acres have been reported as prevent plant acres.

"Here in Pembina County we always have some kind of weather thing going on. Some years the southern part may get hit with water while the north will be dry or vice versa, but this year the whole county got hit hard between the flooding this spring and the rain recently," said Deb Henschel, FSA executive director for the county. "It's been an unbelievable spring and summer. Our guys had to work really hard to get a crop in this year and some sugarbeet acres weren't able to be seeded which is extremely unusual."

Similar figures exist in neighboring counties where prevent plant claimed 187,000 acres in Ramsey County and 220,000 acres in Cavalier County.

Grant Buck, Ward County FSA executive director, said slightly less than half of the county's 2,300 farms have requested prevent plant credit.

"As of now, 8 to 10 percent of cropland in the county, or 60,000 acres, are pp (prevent plant) acres, but it could reach 70,000 acres by the time we're done," he said.

Using preliminary information from the report, Buck said a majority of farms who reported prevent plant acres did so on about 10 to 15 percent of their land, but there are about 20 farms in the county that reported more than 50 percent of their land as unseeded.

"The county is peppered with prevent plant acres but we are seeing some concentrated areas north and east of Minot, in the Minot area itself and east of Highway 83 to the county line," he said.

The final report, expected to be released the week of Sept. 14, will detail prevent plant acres on a county by county and crop by crop basis.