Agricultural Land Investment

 Agriculture and particularly crop land is an emerging asset class which is attracting the attention of institutional investors and key processors / trading organizations due to a combination of factors including:

 

·          Growing world demand for food, fuel and fiber driving potentially finite demand for production of feedstocks.

·          Historically, crop land has provided a strong inflation hedge.

·          Crop land has low / negative correlations with other asset classes.

·          Ownership of crop land, and the needed infrastructure, can be part of an effective risk management strategy in key supply markets for processors.

 HighQuest advises companies, pensions, other institutional investors and family offices developing global crop land investment programs.    The agricultural sector is an extremely complex global web with myriad interactions between participants in the value chain.   Developing a balanced investment program requires a deep understanding of these complexities and the key investment strategy for each client. HighQuest helps guide clients throughout the process.

  

·       Evaluating Crop land and Ag Private Equity.  HighQuest helps clients determine whether and how crop land and ag private equity will meet their investment objectives and fit within the their portfolios, including how crop land investments relate to allocations to commodities, traditional real estate and other asset classes.

·       Target Portfolio Development.  HighQuest works with the client to develop a target portfolio within agriculture including where to invest geographically ... in which crops and livestock/poultry sectors ... and where along the value chain from production to consumption.  HighQuest helps clients to achieve desired diversificaiton across crops and across geographies and weather patterns.

·       Strategic Sourcing Investment.  HighQuest works with companies to target the land uses tied to processing needs as part of the company risk management and sourcing strategies.  The engagement of best in class management in land use reflects the same pattern of questions the investor class will use.  Many of these assignments are part of the feasibility study and then due diligence on specific targets.

·       Manager Selection.   HighQuest maintains the most comprehensive database in the industry of agricultural land and agricultural private equity managers.   We work with clients to identify the best available set of managers to provide the aggregate exposure desired.  Our teams help clients to evaluate manager strategies and execution.   We provide on-the-ground evaluation of managers capabilities in production agriculture, including farming/agronomics, sourcing inputs, marketing production, and managing risk (physical and financial).

·       Investment Monitoring. HighQuest assists clients by monitoring agricultural managers, providing an expert review of performance and benchmarking performance against other managers in the sector.

  

HighQuest hosts the annual Global AgInvesting conference, the leading global investment conference focused on crop land and private equity investments in agriculture (www.globalaginvesting.com).