The act does not direct lenders to make loans to any particular areas or persons. Nor does it direct lenders to make particular kinds of loans or to refrain from any particular loan terms or practices. Instead, HMDA prescribes lender disclosures that, taken together, form a public data set about lending patterns.
And with such low rates of return on financial assets, investors are quickly bidding up the price of farmland in search of a marginally better return. I was in the banking supervision area during the banking crisis of the 1980s, when the collapse of a speculative bubble dramatically and negatively affected the agriculture, real estate and energy industries, almost simultaneously.