Strategic Planning & Investment Services
Volatility in global agricultural production, trade and markets compels agri-food entities to be forward-thinking with planning and investment. WPI has collaborated with public and private industry stakeholders to identify and quantify investment opportunities, develop strategic plans and gain executive-level support for new ventures and initiatives.
Any company that follows up like WPI deserves our business.
WPI Customer, 2025
Recent Consulting Engagements
Infrastructure Investment Due Diligence
On behalf of a Canadian oilseed processer WPI's team provided market analysis, econometric modeling and financial due diligence in support of a $24 million-dollar investment in a Ukrainian crush plant. Consistent with WPI's findings, local production to supply the plant and the facility's output have expanded exponentially since the investment. WPI has conducted parallel work on behalf of U.S., South American and European clients, both private and public, in the agri-food space.
Weighing in on Strategic Realignment
WPI’s team was retained by the governing board of a U.S. industry organization to review a decision, reached by vote, to invest significant assets into the development and management of an export trading company. WPI’s team conducted a formal review of this decision and concluded that the current level of market saturation would limit the benefits of the investment. Based on WPI’s analysis and recommended actions, the board subsequently reversed its decision and undertook a strategic planning effort to identify more impactful investments. On behalf of numerous clients, WPI has not only assisted in identifying strategic paths but also advised their implementation.
Assessment in Support of Expansion
On behalf of a foreign financial services firm that provides lending and crop insurance products to agribusiness and producer clients, WPI assessed the competitive landscape in key U.S. regions in advance of a general expansion effort. WPI’s findings helped direct judicious geographic deployment of client resources, which now include 9 locations in 4 top U.S. agriculture states. In addition to consulting engagements, WPI’s information products unit regularly serves clients in the agri-finance space via daily market and policy reports, providing competitive intelligence to this key link in the industry value chain.
Diverse Challenges, Diverse Solutions
WPI’s team has provided strategic planning and investment services to clients in traditional and agricultural finance and investment banking, private entities involved in the production and marketing of agri-food products, transportation and logistics industry stakeholders, public organizations and government agencies, and more.
For a complete history of projects in this category visit our Project Portfolio.
Food for Progress Monetization Evaluations
Specialized expertise at the intersection of commodity markets, logistics and econometrics
USDA's Food for Progress (FFPr) program uses U.S. agricultural commodities to support economic development around the world. In monetization projects, commodities are purchased in the United States, shipped overseas and sold commercially, with the proceeds used to fund agricultural and economic development programs.
Executing that process successfully is only part of the job. Recipients must also understand whether the monetization achieved sound commercial and cost-recovery results and whether the sale affected local production, trade, prices or other market activity. USDA's post-monetization evaluation requirements make these issues an important component of Food for Progress program accountability.
World Perspectives, Inc. brings a distinctive combination of expertise to these assessments. Our team combines decades of agricultural commodity market analysis, direct monetization and logistics experience, and advanced econometric capabilities. WPI has completed 16 post-monetization impact assessments across a wide range of commodities and developing-country markets.
[WPI] hits on many things that other firms gloss over and makes very good points on all topics.
WPI Customer, 2026
Evaluating the Entire Monetization
A sound post-monetization assessment begins well before the statistical analysis. Every monetization takes place within a unique commodity market, value chain and logistics system, and WPI begins by understanding that commercial context.
Our work examines local supply and demand, imports, production, processing, distribution and end-use; the structure and concentration of the relevant industry; port, storage and transportation infrastructure; and the trade and regulatory environment. We interview importers, processors, traders and other market participants to understand not only what happened, but why it happened.
WPI also evaluates the mechanics and commercial performance of the monetization itself. That includes tender procedures, sales terms, letters of credit and payment risk, freight and vessel arrangements, discharge and storage capacity, inland transportation, and other factors affecting execution.
WPI benchmarks the prices received against relevant U.S., regional and destination-market values and evaluates the factors that drove USDA's ultimate cost recovery. The result is an assessment that shows recipients not simply what percentage of USDA's costs were recovered, but why the monetization produced that result and what could improve future transactions.
Econometric Analysis Built for Food for Progress
Determining whether a monetization affected a local market is considerably more complicated than comparing prices before and after a shipment. Commodity prices move because of weather, exchange rates, global markets, domestic production, competing imports, transportation costs and dozens of other factors.
WPI has developed and refined econometric methods to distinguish broader market forces from the possible effects of a Food for Progress monetization. Where the available data support such analysis, WPI will employ structural-break analysis and models that compare the monetized commodity with substitute products. These methods can help identify whether a statistically significant market change occurred around the monetization and, importantly, whether the evidence actually supports attributing that change to the program. Where appropriate, WPI also builds time-series or panel-data models that help determine whether observed prices and outcomes following the monetization deviated significantly from a priori expectations.
Why WPI?
Food for Progress evaluations require more than conventional monitoring and evaluation expertise. They require an understanding of how agricultural commodities actually move through international markets.
WPI advises participants throughout the global agricultural supply chain and brings that commercial-market perspective directly into FFPr work. Our team understands how traders value commodities, how freight and demurrage affect bids, how buyers manage payment and delivery risk, and how local commodity and food markets respond to supply changes.
That experience complements WPI's econometric capabilities. Instead of treating a statistical model as the evaluation itself, we use quantitative analysis alongside market intelligence, transaction analysis and interviews with market participants to determine whether an observed result is genuinely connected to the monetization or is better explained by other market forces.
That distinction matters. Finding an unusual price is relatively easy. Determining why it occurred is the real evaluation.
WPI's experience across multiple Food for Progress assignments also allows us to recognize patterns that are difficult to see in a single transaction — from commodity and country selection to tender design, freight economics, buyer behavior and cost recovery. The result is an assessment that documents compliance while also producing useful lessons for future monetizations.
Recent Engagement: Regional Food for Progress Monetization
WPI recently evaluated USDA Food for Progress monetizations involving soybean meal and rice in West Africa. The assignment required analysis of the sales and freight transactions, local and regional commodity markets, transportation and storage infrastructure, cost recovery and potential impacts on commercial trade and local prices.
Together, the monetizations achieved an overall USDA cost recovery rate of approximately 71 percent, slightly above USDA's 70-percent benchmark. WPI's econometric analysis found no evidence that the sales adversely affected soybean meal markets or competing exporters in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, while a separate relative-price analysis examined possible effects of the rice monetization in Mali.
The evaluation also identified practical lessons for future transactions. Buyer interviews, for example, showed that substantially higher demurrage exposure associated with U.S.-flagged freight caused purchasers to discount their bids, while coordinating shipments across organizations allowed fuller vessels and lower per-unit freight costs. In other words, the analysis went beyond determining whether the project met evaluation requirements: it identified what drove the result and how future monetizations could perform better.
Start a Food for Progress Evaluation
WPI can help evaluate a completed monetization, prepare for an upcoming transaction, or identify opportunities to improve cost recovery and market outcomes across a portfolio of Food for Progress projects. Our team provides the market intelligence, commercial expertise and quantitative analysis necessary to understand the results.
Contact WPI to discuss a Food for Progress monetization or post-monetization impact assessment.
Market & Political Analysis
A developed international network coupled with several decades of market, crop/commodity and policy experience enable WPI to undertake both domestic and international market research and policy projects – and importantly, to provide practical recommendations for maximizing organizational interests and profit.
WPI does an excellent job of working to assess the client’s needs and tailoring their methodologies accordingly.
WPI Customer, 2024
Recent Consulting Engagements
Export Market Identification and ROI
The executive management team of a U.S. export entity asked WPI to identify new global export markets for a diverse basket of processed agricultural products. After comprehensive analysis of several pre-selected markets, WPI’s team recommended that promotional efforts be conducted in Colombia. Promotional investment was committed and the subsequent increase in exports resulted in a 6:1 return-on-investment. Identifying markets with attractive export opportunities requires keen understanding of specific products and their most appealing attributes, parallel to a comprehensive exercise to find linkages between product characteristics and key market dynamics.
Forecasting Developments in Production Agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.
Communicating Importance of Value-Added Products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.
Diverse Challenges, Diverse Solutions
WPI’s team provides market and policy analysis primarily to agricultural organizations that represent domestic sectors, promote U.S. exports to global markets, or operate across borders, in addition to private firms across the agricultural value chain and government agencies.
For a complete history of projects in this category visit our Project Portfolio.
Program Audit and Evaluation
WPI’s team works with producer organizations to evaluate domestic and global market programming, leading to increased efficiencies both on the administrative and programmatic side; we assist public and private organizations in developing systems to track, measure and report the outputs, outcomes and accomplishments of funded programming to management and stakeholders.
WPI has been responsive and cooperative under every challenge and circumstance presented in their work for us.
WPI Customer, 2025
Recent Consulting Engagements
Accountability and a Comprehensive Approach to Export Programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.
Illuminating the Value of Technical Research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.
Connecting the Dots in Export Promotion
WPI was tasked with assessing the impact of a program that funded technical training to help increase efficiencies of domestic poultry production in a key Middle Eastern market. WPI’s report accurately forecasted healthy, 5-7 percent year-on-year growth in production; subsequent recommendations by WPI for the client to increase promotional expenditures have helped position the client’s product group as a key feed input for the growing sector. WPI’s prescriptions for business success position the client in such a way that, if direct channels are unfeasible, indirect channels to capture residual market share are illuminated.
Diverse Challenges, Diverse Solutions
WPI provides audit and evaluation services primarily to agricultural organizations that receive funding from producers, industry, and/or government agencies. This dynamic requires these organizations to implement and execute practices that report on program results and return-on-investment to financial backers.
For a complete history of projects in this category visit our Project Portfolio.