I once drove from San Francisco to Monterry. It was great because I went through the Salinas valley and saw the places I had read about in Stienbecks books in High School. You could smell the cherries and I was surprised at the little trees they grew on. Then the smell of garlic seemd to come through the windshiled in Gilroy.
That was years ago and now I hear that most of that is built up with housing and communities.
I think I saw many fields with huge signage that matched the labels on cans of vegatables on grocery shelves.
What a loss.
First comes "residential" or "multi-family" zoning which makes the assessed value of the farmer's land skyrocket, along with his property taxes - so he can no longer afford to farm the land, or live in his house for that matter. So he sells the old farm and retires to a condo. Then they put up a bunch of shoddily-constructed houses on postage stamp-sized lots that sell for a half-million dollars each, and call the subdivision something like, "Old Farm at Valley Crossing." How quaint.
Nah, the lands around Gilroy and in the Salinas Valley are still largely agricultural. Probably doesn't look much different today than when you drove it. There are new (and very expensive) developments around Gilroy, but they've hardly wiped out the farmlands.