Global Agricultural
Investing
HighQuest Partners global agricultural investment consulting services HighQuest leverages its deep industry expertise to help leading investment managers and end-investors navigate the complex global agricultural sector.
ag-investment managers • Product development • Investment due diligence • Acquisition strategy / targeting • Portfolio company strategy
institutional and family office end-investors • Researching agricultural markets • Developing and implementing ag-investment programs • Selecting managers • Monitoring performance / attribution
boston • st. louis
Unprecedented Opportunity growing world population, increasing protein consumption in developing countries, and biofuels are combining to drive continued demand growth for major agricultural crops, straining scarce productive resources, and driving commodity prices and volatility higher. • World population is projected to increase 32% to 9.1 billion by 2050. • Rising incomes in developing countries such as China are driving increased consumption of both vegetable oil and animal protein, which in turn drives demand for grains and oilseeds. • Global carry out stocks for major crops are at or near historic lows – there is no buffer – crop shortages must be offset by demand rationing. • Worldwide yield improvements have been declining while arable land has remained flat at 1.4 billion hectares for the past two decades. • Higher crop prices will create investment opportunities across the value chain from inputs, to equipment, to production, to infrastructure.
Complex Execution agriculture is a complex global system, where return drivers and risks are not always immediately apparent. highquest leverages its deep expertise in the global food, agriculture and biofuels sector to help develop and execute tailored agricultural investment programs. • Industry-leading independent fundamental research on global and local markets to support portfolio investment decisions • Unparalleled knowledge of the ag-investment manager universe and the exposures each manager provides investors • Global capabilities to assess investment opportunities and evaluate risks across the value chain • Uncommon insight based on over 100 years of combined industry experience and rigorous market analysis
representative projects ag-land investment management strategy for a $100 billion diversified money manager • Developed highly quantitative evaluation of historic returns and current fundamentals • Stress-tested the investment thesis • Compared economics of land investment and return potential in different locales
manager identification for a $500 million program for a top sovereign wealth fund • Identified universe of managers globally that met the fund’s basic investment criteria • Based on the exposures that met the fund’s objectives, developed initial target list of managers for further diligence
due diligence on ~75,000 hectares of soy, cotton and corn production in brazil • On-the-ground evaluation of operations • Benchmarking vs. local best in class • Evaluation of returns to grain storage
a $300 million ag-land investment program for a $30 billion european pension fund • Evaluation of asset class fundamentals for board approval on mandate • Development of target portfolio / allocation • Identification of managers for targeted exposures
a study of institutional ag-investment managers worldwide for the oecd • Developed most comprehensive database of ag-investment managers available • Profiled where market-based investments are being targeted (by geography, crop, etc.) • Prepared case studies of environmental, social and economic impact of institutional farmland investment
due diligence on 5,000 hectares of soybean, grazing and timber land in uruguay • On-the-ground evaluation of soil and economic potential under different uses • Benchmarking vs. local best-in-class