A little over five years ago the world as we know it changed forever when COVID-19 swept across the globe bringing fear, uncertainty and drastic countermeasures with it. A lot has changed in the half decade after we collectively watched “Tiger King” while keeping a close eye on the supply of toilet paper.

While change isn’t always for the better, there are plenty of other places you can go if you’d like to rehash what society got wrong five years ago. Instead, I’d like to celebrate one of the many things that we gained through the pandemic that’s made life better today: Shop Kansas Farms.

A little over a month into everyone staying at home while supply chains were straining to keep up with an unfathomable shift in where and what we were eating, Rick McNary’s wife told him she saw an empty meat counter at the store earlier that day.

McNary understood that food is often bought at the grocery store but comes from farmers and ranchers, who were definitely still farming and ranching. He grabbed his laptop, opened up Facebook and created a group to connect shoppers with the farmers and ranchers who produce the food we eat.

It was the right solution at the right time. More than 5,000 members joined in the first 24 hours and that grew tenfold in the course of the first week. Five years later, Shop Kansas Farms is still growing with more than 170,000 members consisting of consumers looking for anything that grows in Kansas and the growers who can fulfill their orders.

The group has expanded to a searchable website, www.shopkansasfarms.com, and live events like the upcoming Market of Farms at the Douglas County Fairgrounds on March 29. Other states have even copied the model to connect buyers and sellers.

McNary’s background as a pastor and in international relief efforts certainly helped in creating the viral sensation when Shop Kansas Farms first launched, as did timing. But it’s grown because he understood the group was more than a mere marketplace.

It took off like a wildfire racing across the prairie because five years ago everyone was isolated and Shop Kansas Farms was a community. One that used modern tools to connect us in familiar ways.

Much as Shop Kansas Farms reimagined how shoppers purchase food during the pandemic, it’s also working to make the supply chain more resilient through another idea from McNary. His Harvest Hub model starts with growers but also includes processors and distributors at a local or regional level.

McNary is always quick to point out he has had help even early on, but he has been the driving force behind the growth and evolution of Shop Kansas Farms. And he still adheres to one of the first mandates adopted shortly after creating the group: to prosper farmers and ranchers.

After five years of learning and development, the group is still going strong. Farmers and ranchers never stopped growing during the pandemic, and thanks to McNary we were able to keep shopping.

Insight” is a weekly column published by Kansas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization whose mission is to strengthen agriculture and the lives of Kansans through advocacy, education and service.