If you’ve noticed more subdivisions, warehouses, and new roads popping up where rice fields used to be, you’re not imagining it. A newly published study in Land Use Policy looked at how much cropland in the Philippines has been converted into built-up areas—think housing, commercial zones, and infrastructure—over nearly two decades.

The paper is led by Arnan B. Araza and Ma. Christina Corales of IMPACT R&D, with their co-authors, and it offers a clear national picture of where these changes are happening and what they mean for food security and planning.

The results point to a clear national pattern: as built-up areas expand, croplands tend to shrink. Across provinces, the relationship was very strong (r = 0.89), reinforcing what many communities already sense on the ground—development pressure often shows up as farmland loss.

At the same time, the conversion is not happening evenly across the country. The study shows that cropland-to-built-up change clusters in specific hotspots rather than spreading uniformly nationwide. Strong pressure appears in parts of Central and Southern Mindanao and Central Luzon, with additional pockets in selected Visayas provinces. These areas often align with growing towns, peri-urban expansion, and development corridors where land is both accessible and highly in demand.

One of the most important red flags is where some of this conversion is happening. The researchers mapped about 10,397 hectares of cropland converted into built-up land, and around 31% (3,228 hectares) occurred inside NPAAAD zones—areas intended to protect prime agricultural lands. In other words, a significant share of conversion is taking place in locations that are supposed to be safeguarded for food production.

What makes this especially concerning is that the conversions inside NPAAAD were not random. They were concentrated in agro-industrial and alluvial lands—areas that are typically fertile, productive, and accessible. Ironically, those same qualities also make them attractive for roads, industrial estates, and real estate development, putting some of the country’s best farmland at the center of competing land-use demands.

The study also makes it clear that there are practical steps that can be strengthened right away. One of the most immediate is improving alignment between policy and practice: cities and municipalities can better match their CLUPs and zoning ordinances with national protection frameworks like NPAAAD and SAFDZ, so prime agricultural lands are not quietly reclassified or overlooked in local planning decisions.

It also highlights the value of making monitoring routine rather than reactive. With Earth Observation data, government agencies and LGUs can track land conversion more regularly and spot likely changes early—while there is still time to intervene, verify permits, or correct inconsistencies before conversion becomes permanent.

Because conversion pressure is concentrated in specific areas, the study suggests focusing attention where it is most needed. Hotspot provinces and peri-urban corridors can benefit from targeted audits and compliance checks to surface zoning problems, speculative development, or implementation gaps that allow protected lands to be converted.

Finally, the research underscores that evidence is most useful when people can understand it. Sharing results in public-friendly formats—such as story maps and dashboards—can help communities and stakeholders see what is happening, ask better questions, and take part in land use decisions that shape their food security and future growth.