Farmer's crop is victim of urbanization: road lights

A soybean farmer in southwestern Kentucky is losing part of his crop due to urbanization, but not how you might think. No shopping mall or industrial park is being built on farmland; rather, high-powered lights recently installed on a new segment of the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway next to Kelly Keith's fields are tricking his beans into still growing as the harvest season approaches, Julia Hunter of the Kentucky New Era reports, in a story that is based on a fine point of farming but broaches the larger subject of urbanization.

"They don't know whether it's daylight or dark out here," Keith told Hunter. One irregular area of the field, shaped by shadows of trees blocking the lights, has already turned brown, signaling harvest time, while the rest remains green. To be harvested, beans must turn brown and have no more than than 15 to 16 percent moisture, Hunter reports. "Basically it's the same for with any crop -- even trees, how their leaves get brown in the fall," Scott Lain, crop consultant for Argi-Chem, a local agricultural supplier, told Hunter. "The days start getting shorter and the crop responds to the shortness in the days."

Keith expects to lose half his profit on about 40 acres, and plans to contact state highway officials about the lights. He tells Hunter than cutting the lights off at 10 o'clock would stop the beans from growing, but he doesn't expect any sympathy from the state. For now, he'll wait the beans out, hoping for the unlikely self-correction or the season's first freeze to kill them off. He tells Hunter: "I'm just going to have to consider something different here. I won't be able to raise soybeans." (Read more, subscription required)