As oil skips through $100 a barrel, the focus is on energy prices. As we say, if you want to know where the economy is heading, watch the price at the pump. It’s moving fast. The short-term economic outlook then is not good. Each oil spike since the 1970’s has preceded or coincided with a recession. But as they say, the solution to high oil prices is high oil prices. That’s because when energy becomes expensive, consumers are eventually forced to reduce demand. The price eventually comes down.

Supply matters too. All citizens of the world are now only too familiar with choke points. I think I could recognise the map of the Straits of Hormuz more quickly than that of the English Channel. Le Manche for our French readers, yes we are international, didn’t you know!

So, as oil sorts itself out, remember Iran has to export through the Straits too. It is food that concerns us more. This was the case even before this latest war. Climate change, ignored by some, shows its inevitable creep most clearly in global food production. From cocoa and coffee to cotton and cod, production is under threat from heat, monsoons and the migration of fish stocks. North Sea cod catch is now just 15,000 tonnes a year. It was 300,000.

But the coming food pressure is down to a simple truth. Food is just energy in disguise. Fertiliser is made using natural gas. Tractors run on diesel. Greenhouses for tomatoes need heating and lighting. Even the humble pea requires fertiliser to grow, diesel to plant and harvest, and electricity to store and freeze. The frozen pea is three to four times more energy intensive than its fresh equivalent. In effect it is a little cold green store of energy that tastes quite nice. If energy gets expensive, food prices cannot help but follow.

And when we spend more money on food, that spending crowds out most other things. Discretionary purchases are delayed or cancelled. This brings us closer to recession. You could sum it up like this. A recession is what happens when we have to spend more money on the same things.

Stock markets have reacted, falling some 10%. Bond markets have also weakened as inflation worries build. The spiral has been kicked off. Past crises, such as the first Gulf War in 1990-91, suggest we may have some months of turbulence ahead. Yet markets, as long as they are allowed to operate, are like water finding its way downhill. One path becomes blocked, but it will seep through somewhere else. It might take time and make a mess on the way, but it does not stop. Money keeps moving until it finds a place where it can work again.

For investors, patience remains the most valuable asset. Selling a month after the start of the first Gulf War would have meant exiting at the UK FTSE 100’s lowest point of the 1990s, missing out on a 200% rise over the next eight years. But it took nerve to hold as sentiment turned gloomy. The gloomiest meeting I can remember, outside of March 2020, was January 1991. The short term is likely to be choppy. But if there is one near term certainty it is food prices are set to rise.

So, if you are wanting to save a little don’t just fill up the car, fill up the freezer too. It’s time to Give Peas a Chance.