A double-digit surge in grocery inflation is being driven by the Iran war, with rising energy costs and a “broken” global system, food security experts have warned.Food prices could rise by more than 10 per cent once disruption linked to the Strait of Hormuz “works its way through” supply chains, with mounting concern that the era of plentiful, cheap food in western economies has ended, industry figures and academics told the UK Parliament.The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee heard that “volatility is the new norm”, with shocks from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, alongside the legacy of Covid disruption.“The food system is competing in a very energy-hungry world now,” said Karen Betts, chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation. She warned fuel costs would feed directly into prices on supermarket shelves. Food volumes sold in UK supermarkets were already about 5 per cent lower than in 2020, she added, “so we are definitely seeing consumers buying less as a result of food costing more”.A Kashmiri orchard worker in India. Food prices are expected to rise across the globe. EPAInfoThe Bank of England has separately warned that rising energy costs are expected to intensify inflationary pressures, particularly in food. Minutes from the bank’s recent meetings said the “indirect effects of high energy prices via increased production costs were expected to be significant, and likely to affect food prices particularly”. The Bank warned that “structural change in price and wage-setting” could entrench inflation into next year and beyond, raising fears of prolonged pressure on living standards.Experts told MPs that the consequences were already being felt by poorer households. Dr Hannah Brinsden, head of policy at the Food Foundation, said food insecurity was again increasing, as families cut back on healthy foods. Around half of food-insecure households have reduced fruit consumption, while about 40 per cent have cut back on vegetables.“That’s really worrying, because we know that fruit and vegetables are the foundations of a healthy diet,” she said. “If food prices are going to rise again, we’re expecting food insecurity to rise again and that’s really problematic.”Prof Tim Lang, of City University, London, said western assumptions about permanent food abundance no longer hold. “The pre-2020 era is over, especially with the amount of shocks that are coming into the food system,” he said, highlighting not only fuel prices but cyberattacks and ransomware incidents hitting retailers and manufacturers.“Ransomware is now a routine reality of the food manufacturing and retailing sectors,” the academic warned. “We’ve got multiple shocks.”Dr Brinsden also warned of “record levels of insolvencies” across food manufacturing and said not all businesses would survive the coming period. The experts also criticised ministers for failing to classify food production as critical national infrastructure and questioned why government energy support had not been directed towards farming and food resilience.“Suddenly it’s just assumed the retailers and the manufacturers can deal with it, but they can’t,” Prof Lang said. “That is actually political failure.”