Europe Pushes to Get Fuel From Fields

A farm worker in a rapeseed field in Dorking, England. Rapeseed oil can be turned into biofuel, which produces fewer emissions than gasoline.

ARDEA, Italy — The previous growing season, this lush coastal field near Rome was filled with rows of delicate durum wheat, used to make high-quality pasta. Today it overflows with rapeseed, a tall, gnarled weedlike plant bursting with coarse yellow flowers that has become a new manna for European farmers: rapeseed can be turned into biofuel.

Motivated by generous subsidies to develop alternative energy sources — and a measure of concern about the future of the planet — Europe’s farmers are beginning to grow crops that can be turned into fuels meant to produce fewer emissions than gas or oil. They are chasing their counterparts in the Americas who have been raising crops for biofuel for more than five years.

“This is a much-needed boost to our economy, our farms,” said Marcello Pini, 50, a farmer, standing in front of the rapeseed he planted for the first time. “Of course, we hope it helps the environment, too.” In March, the European Commission, disappointed by the slow growth of the biofuels industry, approved a directive that included a “binding target” requiring member countries to use 10 percent biofuel for transport by 2020 — the most ambitious and specific goal in the world.
Most European countries are far from achieving the target, and are introducing incentives and subsidies to bolster production.

As a result, bioenergy crops have replaced food as the most profitable crop in several European countries. In this part of Italy, for example, the government guarantees the purchase of biofuel crops at 22 euros for 100 kilograms, or $13.42 for 100 pounds — nearly twice the 11 to 12 euros for 100 kilograms of wheat on the open market in 2006. Better still, farmers can plant biofuel crops on “set aside” fields, land that Europe’s agriculture policy would otherwise require be left fallow.

But an expert panel convened by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization pointed out that the biofuels boom produces benefits as well as trade-offs and risks — including higher and wildly fluctuating food prices. In some markets, grain prices have nearly doubled. Leia mais aqui no The New York Times