WHAT I LEARNED IN UNIVERSITY

Perhaps the most important lessons I learned in university were not part of any curriculum or found in an assigned reading. They also didn't arrive as an accumulated set of learnings that finally coalesced into a new way of thinking at the end of my degree. Instead, it arrived incidentally and all at once in my first semester.

I had gotten myself into this kind of experimental experiential undergrad semester. There, our cohort was working on a project to design what was labelled a "local food hub." The idea was that this thing would combine the functions of a farmer's market, processing and wholesale centres, as well as being a place for food education such as cooking, baking, and gardening classes. Something of this sort was what many stakeholders had been demanding for some time. Great! All of us were excited about finding ways to support and grow regional and urban agriculture but we were also hung up on semantics. We all seemed to have a different idea of what "local" meant and thus the whole stated orientation and aim of this thing.

As a class we were stuck in a passionate debate about whether apples from northern Washington (just an hour or two south, but crossing an international border) were more or less "local" than cranberries from northeastern BC (maybe 18 hours north but still within the province.) Did we want to define "local" as, say, anything within 200km of Vancouver; or did, by definition, an international border firmly demarcate a meaningful political, ethical, or even spiritual boundary between "here" and "over there?" Or did it make a whole lot more sense, from an ecological perspective, and given that we sought to dictate terms for a sustainable business, to declare as "local" the entire Cascadia bioregion extending across much of BC and all the way down the coast to central California? Or maybe "local" could be any food from any locale so long as the food was native to that region? That seemed firmly within the spirit of what this whole project was about, after all. And, furthermore, yes, it felt we'd fatally wound the business, and right out of the gate, by limiting the whole enterprise to only those products and ingredients from farms within our own Agricultural Land Reserve. (You can only do so much with beets!)

Other folks were adamant they didn't see any point in even attempting to open a food-related business, one needing to turn a profit, that was going to eliminate from the menu both coffee and chocolate. Perhaps, some conceded, there was room for products that were processed locally, such as coffee that was roasted in town; but, also, if so, what then could not be considered local? If foods from the equator were permissible then wasn't everything on the table? And then why impose this limiting label at all? "What" some rightfully argued, "would distinguish this local food hub from a 7-11 or Starbucks?" And then wasn't this whole project little more than greenwashing? You see, there was a lot to consider.

I volunteered to be part of a small group tasked with resolving the issue and defining the term "local" for the purposes of the project while others got onto other pressing matters. While I hate group work (at least as it is typically formulated in most school settings) I do love a puzzle or even just a big tangled ball of twine. And the only thing better than a messy debate is semantics; so a messy debate on semantics, well... In this small group we had a lengthy discussion and sent dozens of messages back and forth, effectively rehearsing all the same arguments our wider class came up with – those very sticking points that had us form this breakout group to resolve.

We had this question we were given and we'd fleshed out anything that seemed a relevant factor. We circled all around various arguments, again and again weighing and working through all the pros and cons. Eventually we sought out examples from around the world, too. There were many different solutions, all with perfectly justifiable answers. In the end, it seemed we just needed to pick a definition that felt like a best-fit and then sufficiently articulate and defend how we came to this conclusion. So, we did that. We went through this whole process and were set to present our findings to the larger group.

Sleeping on it, I had myself an epiphany. This whole project we'd been given was wrong. And that's why the question was so sticky and the answer we settled with so unsatisfying. The framing, it seemed to me, was entirely off. The problem here was not a complicated one requiring a team of people to become informed experts who could then sift and grind through a mountain of pertinent and conflicting data to arrive at a single solution that would inevitably leave some folks less than thrilled.

This issue, as far as I could tell, wasn't even a problem of definition. The real problem was that we were attempting to define "local" at all. What we were trying to do was stand at a distance and pick one of three predefined frameworks that would then apply, one-size-fits-all, to everyone in all possible scenarios for the rest of time. Barf! What a terrible idea. Alone, I decided that if supporting local was a value then what needed to be done was for the organization to make the strongest possible argument for local food and from there simply provide a radical level of transparency about where foods come from. Then, rather than imposing many pointless limitations on the operation, it users, and customers, just let people make choices that work for them. Somehow, by sleeping on it, I became convinced that offering accessible, convenient, and unprecedented access to information about where foods and ingredients were sourced (information readily available but commonly hidden from the public) was the answer we were looking for.

So, the answer to "What's local?" was "What if knowing where your food came from didn't require hours of your time, a personal connection within the food wholesale community, a data plan, and some professional-level research skills?” The answer was, "What if we didn't need to dictate what folks must think or care about or how they should behave but instead provide them with the information and tools to make good choices, whatever that may be for them?"

Needless to say, nobody in the group liked my assessment. We were tasked to define the term "local” and that's what people wanted to do. And so that's what we did…

Still, this whole process was huge for me. I was convinced to never again take questions or problems as they're presented. It felt obvious to me that it's too easy to get hung up on an issue not because it's complex, because we haven't fully assessed the situation or gathered sufficient data, but because we're approaching it from entirely the wrong angle – often, as above, a premise that dictates a certain (very commonly wrong) answer.

I also learned how critical it is to frame questions for others so that they don't predetermine bad answers, the same old predictable ones, or eliminate broader solutions. It was also valuable to experience in such a clear and real-world manner how we can problem-solve, busy ourselves all day long convinced we're creating solutions – and can even tell ourselves we've accomplished all of that – without ever doing so or even modestly improving anything. (Defining "local" in any one way, or leaving it vague or making it extremely encompassing, created far more issues than it resolved.)

And, of course, I learned, once again, that people are often so fixated on being "right," providing the "correct" answer they know is expected of them, that they will do so even while aware that doing so is arbitrarily limiting and even detrimental – and thus perfectly "wrong." I was also convinced that there really is no point in attempting to dissuade anyone running on such an operating system, never mind a group of them, and that you just have to get out of the way of folks who, as Sir Ken Robinson famously reminded us, are so determined to be "right", wary of being "wrong," that they will never do anything useful or interesting.

(Which is most definitely not to suggest that I'm so creative or that getting things wrong is good or that being wrong will result in something interesting or useful, only that it's extraordinarily difficult to be creative or take things further without also accepting the near-certainty of failing to stick one's landing and ending up as a pile of broken, tangled limbs on the floor.)