Suburban sprawl displacing agriculture has been happening since the middle of the last century.
We were hurrying to my father-in-law’s funeral in the Bay Area and stopped very late at a shiny new motel along the interstate west of Bakersfield. When I emerged in the morning, I gagged and nearly threw up. The stench, which was not there when we checked in, was utterly overpowering. The wind had shifted during the night, and the morning
light revealed what the darkness had previously concealed: a gigantic cattle feed lot a few hundred yards from the hotel.