POWELL (AP) - Wyoming farmers are receiving higher prices for their products this year, but it also cost them more to produce them.

"We have more money coming in, but more money going out," Butch Clifton of rural Powell said. "There isn't more money ending up in the pocket.

"The biggest frustration is on the street is when Joe Blow says, `Boy, you guys are making a lot of money this year.' He doesn't understand that the cost of fuel and everything else is going up."

Clifton, a small operator, said his costs for diesel fuel and fertilizer increased tremendously over the past few years.

"Oh, boy," he said, and repeated, "Oh, boy. I'm getting ready to order red diesel, and I don't know how much it will be. That's scary."

He said a part-time employee saw the price of diesel this spring and asked, `Are you going to order it?' I looked at the field and said, `Are we going to plant this field?"'

Multiple operations

To save on fuel costs, Clifton said he tries to combine multiple operations in one trip over the field. For instance, he will push a cultivator with a tractor while pulling a corrugator. The cultivator plants seeds for a crop; the corrugator makes little ditches for irrigation water.

"I do both at once to save me a trip across the fields," he said.

But it's not possible to cut back on fertilizer without cutting production, he added.

He noted all his supplies must be shipped to him, further adding to the costs of his operation.

He's also found it necessary to increase pay for his part-time hired help to compete with the oil and gas industry.

"They can make so much more in the energy field," he said.

Fred Hopkin, who runs a large farming operation in Park County, said fuel prices have doubled in the last three years, and some fertilizer prices have tripled.

"What it does is it increases our risk. Instead of, for example, having $500 an acre into a crop, we might have $800 or $900 into a crop. It increases the risk if we have a crop failure," Hopkin said. "If it's a good crop, it compensates; if we have a crop failure, it increases our crop exposure."

Fewer trips

To compensate for high fuel costs, Hopkin said he's growing more acres of crops that require fewer trips over the field, such as barley or alfalfa seed, and fewer of crops that require more fuel and fertilizer.

"Sugar beets have easily over a $1,000 per-acre input," he said. "Of all the crops we grow, nothing uses more fuel or fertilizer than what sugar beets do."

Hopkin said he planted only the 650 acres of beets he's obligated to grow under his contract with the Wyoming Sugar Cooperative.

"We usually have 850 acres or more," he said. "Just about every farmer I know is just growing what he's required to grow."

Hopkin noted sugar prices are starting to increase as well but not as much as expenses.

Generally, sugar beets are one of the more lucrative crops in the Big Horn Basin, he said.

"But this year, under this scenario, it's probably one of the least profitable," he said.