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Unless you’re involved in farming in some way, you tend not to make the connection between climate impacts and rising food prices.

While the Irish side of our family is heavily invested in farming, I had no direct experience until we bought a small plot of land in Turkey about fifteen years ago.

While I long dreamed of living a subsistence lifestyle, the reality is that we grow cash crops. In our case tea and hazelnuts, the two main sources of agricultural income in this region.

For us, it’s more of a hobby than a financial investment, but for many of our neighbours these crops contribute to a significant proportion of their income. Not this year though, because the hazelnut crop has largely failed.

A late frost after the catkins had flowered damaged much of the crop, while hungry bears devoured much of what remained. We have one grove high up in the forest that reportedly has yielded nothing at all, while trees closer to home have produced a paltry harvest compared to previous years.

It is clear that this diminished supply will have an impact on global food prices. The Black Sea region of Turkey is the world’s largest exporter of hazelnuts, so we can expect supply shortages to push up prices further.

We may say that we can live without hazelnuts. Yes, but bad news: late frosts and extremely wet weather in spring have impacted all manner of crops. Friends based in other regions have reported equally disastrous results.

Potatoes could not be planted on time because the ground was too wet. Fruit trees and vines have failed, or have produced smaller crops than anticipated. If supermarkets shelves are empty back home, it’s because this is a global problem.

If you believe that AI will solve these problems, think again. On the contrary, it will exacerbate them, for the electricity and water required to run the gargantuan data centres will dwarf anything we have seen before. It is just yet more out of control tech capitalism rampaging on with no regard for the natural world.

Mankind needs food to eat and water to drink. Perhaps we can get used to a world without tea or nutty chocolate. Perhaps we will be prepared to treat tomatoes as a luxury. But staple like wheat, rice and potatoes? Less so.

There are many complex and interconnected reasons for the rising prices and hyper-inflation witnessed all around us. Some of it is human greed, as the richest 1% skim off far more than their share so they can take joyrides into space. Some, the impact of conflict, disrupting supply chains. Some, the impact of flooding and raging fires.

But if you really want to see what’s going on, try reconnecting the food on your plate to where it comes from. If food production fails, we all fail.