While there have been many consumer-generated ideas in terms of purchasing patterns, none are more intriguing than the idea of focusing on purchasing food produced locally in order to reduce one's carbon footprint.
Moving forward the idea of buying locally is likely to have the added benefit of generally lower costs.
While the short-term may not suggest significantly higher fuel costs, longer term they will go higher, likely to the point transportation becomes a major cost factor for many products, in particular time sensitive ones such as fresh produce.
That will mean strawberries grown on a farm a few miles from the consumer's home will be cheaper than those shipped from California.
One can certainly envision a future where fossil fuels are in short supply. Yes, that has been a threat which has been talked about frankly since I was in high school, and has never actually happened.
Technology has allowed developments to extract oil from previously inaccessible reserves, and exploration has ramped up to find new sources. However, world oil reserves are finite.
Kim Lonsdale, Director Resources with Enterprise Saskatchewan spoke about the dwindling resource at the recent 2010 Wings of Saskatchewan Conference.
Lonsdale said China "is likely to double the number of cars in the next 20-years." That will mean a massive need for oil in a world where reserves are shrinking.
Lonsdale said OPEC country oil reserves are over-estimated, and Mexican and North Sea reserves are running out.
As that scenario eventually plays out, running trucks with lettuce and tomatoes from California to Saskatchewan is going to become much more costly unless alternate energy sources to run those trucks is developed.
Some will hold out the hope biodiesel is the answer, but in a world where population is growing - nine billion by 2050 - vegetable oil for fuel is not likely to be accepted as people need food.
That brings us back to looking at how we as individuals do things.
At the 2010 Yorkton Film Festival a panel of industry veterans talked about the end of paper in the world of media. The idea of killing trees and hauling paper books to stores around the world will virtually disappear as publishers and consumers realize computer downloads are lower cost and more environmentally sound.
On the food side the same influences will apply.
However, a few fundamentals will need to substantially change in order to fully realize the potential of the so-called 100-mile food cart.
For consumers, our food tastes are likely have to change from what is now quite an international one.
The December holiday season really illustrates those tastes. Traditional foods of the season, Mandarin oranges, Brazil nuts, sweet potatoes (yams), rice for cabbage rolls, poppy seeds and many others are not likely to ever be grown locally.
The other side of the equation is how we actually devolve an increasingly centralized food processing sector to facilitate the idea of food coming from within 100-miles of our doors.
All the milk produced in Saskatchewan now gets hauled to a single processor in Saskatoon, and cartons of milk hauled back, where once each city, and many larger towns had local processors a few decades ago.
The system is not condusive to eating locally. Yorkton may have dairy farms operating within a few miles of the city limits, but the milk has been on a truck burning gallons of diesel before anyone in the city drinks a glass.
Hog and beef processing is all but lost completely in the province too.
There may be a feedlot at Rhein, but the steaks on the barbecue could come from a thousand miles away, again burning up the fuel to get to your door.
Eating locally, reducing our consumption of non-renewable resources, are lofty ideals to pursue, but as we sit down to the special meals of the upcoming season it will be obvious we are a long way from achieving those goals.
