I was curious - land use stats in the US show agricultural use has dropped from 49% to 45% in the last 60 years, with the majority of the loss in the 90s and early 60s. Basically zero change in the last 20 years. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?location...

It looks like there's about 20x more ag land, by sq km, than urban land in the US (4M to about 200k). So even if urban areas doubled in size, purely at the expense of ag (and not forests), it would be about 5% loss overall.

I have a feeling these numbers don't account for suburban land use, and that's actually an issue... Not urban use.

> We never hear of encroachment of precious farmlands by sprawling urban areas either.

I hear this a lot and trust it is a widespread occurrence. Here (gulf-coast FL), farms are commonly non-viable when sold to developers. Our tree-based crops seem especially prone to farm-busting economics, diseases and weather.

This is a negligible effect in comparison to those described in the article.

It's a "big" topic here in France, a law recently passed that prohibits mayors from increasing the total artificial surface in their municipalities. I have seen many right-wing politicians wanting to get rid of it.