The future ain't what it used to be.

The title of this month's column is taken from one of my favourite characters, Yogi Berra. Yogi was a talented baseball catcher. But he is most notable for garbling the English language every time he was interviewed by the press. His famous quotes were always a little off-beat, but also profoundly to the point.

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Since "the future definitely ain't what it used to be," I think Yogi could not have come up with a better definition of international trade today.

First let's consider the new model of integrated trade. We are rapidly moving past the old-fashioned concept of trade being a one-way flow of goods and services, all from one market of producers to another market of consumers. Now the real quest is to create off-shore ventures closer to market, joint equity investments and integrated partnerships along an entire supply chain.

Off-shoring and out-sourcing of ingredients or component parts is becoming increasingly common to places like China, India, Vietnam and elsewhere. And the off-shore supplier is just as likely to also serve as a company's added partner for investment capital or as an added source for immigrant labour. In many cases the global supply companies also turn around and become distribution partners or referral agents for the finished goods once the parts are returned to Saskatchewan, assembled, and shipped out to markets for re-exporting.

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In other words, in today's new world of integrated trade, the lines between exporting, investment and trade are rapidly blurring together. Without a reliable, low-cost and high-quality source of global suppliers, many current firms are just not going to compete. Successful 21st century exporters are increasingly going to require global supply chain partnerships.

The rise of China and India in the 21st century represents huge opportunities for us, however, and not threats. Saskatchewan exporters will succeed by focusing on where they can add extra value--in new product development and innovation, in sophisticated global marketing, in higher value R and D, finance, engineering and production processes.

With a rapidly emerging middle class in China, India, and other developing countries, there our other opportunities beyond these supply chain linkages. Above all, Saskatchewan sits on 44 per cent of all the arable land in one of the biggest countries on earth. We also have some of the world's richest deposits, and most politically stable economies, for extracting energy and minerals.

But perhaps Saskatchewan's greatest virtues may be cold weather and wide open spaces. Cold temperatures often mean higher quality production and "northern vigour," not just in canola and durum wheat, but in emerging new sources of plant-based protein from crops such as field peas, chick peas or lentils. Cold weather and open spaces also mean less likelihood of disease and contamination of our livestock production, and a strong and clean brand for our organic crops.

The biggest trend in Saskatchewan agriculture will be linking the relationship between the food we grow and process, and its resultant impact on the world's human health. The food science from our universities is leading the way in opening up new markets in human health and livestock nutrition. In aging and prosperous societies like Europe, North American and Japan there will be increasing emphasis on omega-3's, essential fatty acids, high anti-oxidants, and high fibre in our diets.

The future of Saskatchewan agriculture will be to identify market and develop these functional food ingredients as the highest value components of our agri-value exports. We need to combine this with high levels of traceability, containerization and other bio-security systems to maximize our comparative advantage in this aging world population.

The Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership (STEP) is helping Saskatchewan build upon its proud agricultural heritage by moving up the value chain, and adding science and marketing to maximize business margins into more diversified new markets. Integrated trade, food safety, and value-added functional foods and nutritional ingredients are just a few of the emerging opportunities for Saskatchewan. Also consider our growth potential for exporting of new energy and environmental technologies, zero tillage farming equipment, intelligent transportation engineering, and skilled fabrication and assembly of manufactured components, just to name a few other areas. Our list of strategic niches to fuel, feed, and service the world is really quite breathtaking.

In summary, I can't think of a better place than Saskatchewan to be part of this unprecedented global future. Yogi would love it here!

Dale Botting is the President and CEO of the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership.