Best, an expert at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. “But as the scale grows and the demand for biofuel crops seems to be infinite, we’re seeing some negative effects and we need to hold up a yellow light.”
Josette Sheeran, the new head of the United Nations World Food program, which fed nearly 90 million people in 2006, said that biofuels created new problems. “An increase in grain prices impacts us because we are a major procurer of grain for food,” she said. “So biofuels are both a challenge and an opportunity.”
In Europe, the rapid conversion of fields that once grew wheat or barley to biofuel crops like rapeseed is already leading to shortages of the ingredients for making pasta and brewing beer, suppliers say. That could translate into higher prices in supermarkets.
“New and increasing demand for bioenergy production has put high pressure on the whole world grain market,” said Claudia Conti, a spokesman for Barilla, one of the largest Italian pasta makers. “Not only German beer producers, but Mexican tortilla makers have see the cost of their main raw material growing quickly to historical highs.”
Some experts are more worried about the potential impact to low-income consumers. In the developing world, the shift to more lucrative biofuel
crops destined for richer countries could create serious hunger and damage the environment if wild land is converted to biofuel cultivation, the agriculture panel concluded.
But officials at the European Commission say they are pursuing a measured course that will prevent some of the price and supply problems seen in American markets.
In a recent speech, Mariann Fischer Boel, the European agriculture and rural development commissioner, said that the 10 percent target was “not a shot in the dark,” but was carefully chosen to encourage a level of growth for the biofuel industry that would not produce undue hardship for Europe’s poor.
She calculated that this approach would push up would raw material prices for cereal by 3 percent to 6 percent by 2020, while prices for oilseed might rise 5 percent to 18 percent. But food prices on the shelves would barely change, she said.
Yet even as the European program begins to harvest biofuels in greater volume, homegrown production is still far short of what is needed to reach the 10 percent goal: Europe’s farmers produced an estimated 2.9 billion liters, or 768 million gallons, of biofuel in 2004, far shy of the 3.4 billion gallons generated in the United States in the period. In 2005,
biofuel accounted for around 1 percent of Europe’s fuel, according to European statistics, with almost all of that in Germany and Sweden. The biofuel share in Italy was 0.51 percent, and in Britain, 0.18 percent. That could pose a threat to European markets as foreign producers like Brazil or developing countries like Indonesia and Malaysia try to ship their biofuels to markets where demand, subsidies and tax breaks are the greatest.
Ms. Fischer Boel recently acknowledged that Europe would have to import at least a third of what it would need to reach its 10 percent biofuels target. Politicians fear that could hamper development of a local industry, while perversely generating tons of new emissions as “green” fuel is shipped thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic, instead of coming from the farm next door.
Such imports could make biofuel far less green in other ways as well — for example if Southeast Asian rainforest is destroyed for cropland. Brazil, a country with a perfect climate for sugar cane and vast amounts of land, started with subsidies years ago to encourage the farming of sugarcane for biofuels, partly to take up “excess capacity” in its flagging agricultural sector.
The auto industry jumped in, too. In 2003, Brazilian automakers started producing flex-fuel cars that could run on biofuels, including locally produced ethanol. Today, 70 percent of new cars in the country are flex-fuel models, and Brazil is one of the largest growers of cane for ethanol.
Analysts are unsure if the Brazilian achievement can be replicated in Europe — or anywhere else. Sugar takes far less energy to convert to biofuel than almost any product.
Yet after a series of alarming reports on climate change, the political urgency to move faster is clearly growing.
With an armload of incentives, the Italian government hopes that 70,000 hectares, or 173,000 acres, of land will be planted with biofuel crops in 2007, and 240,000 hectares in 2010, up from zero in 2006.
Mr. Pini, the farmer, has converted about 25 percent of his land, or 18 hectares, including his “set aside” land, to Europe’s fastest-growing biofuel crop, rapeseed. He still has 50 hectares in grain and 7 in olives. He has discovered other advantages as well. In Italy’s finicky food culture, food crops have to look good and be high quality to sell— a drought or undue heat can mean an off year. Crops for fuel, in contrast, can be ugly or stunted.
“You need fewer seeds and it’s much easier to grow,” he said.
欧洲竞相从农田获取燃料
阿尔代亚，意大利——上个生长季节，罗马近郊植物葱茏的靠海农田，遍布成排的纤细的硬质小麦，过去用于制作高品质意粉。今天，这里却长满了油菜花，一种高高的、多节的类似杂草的、盛开野黄花的植物。它已经成为上帝赐给欧洲农民的一种新的作物：因为油菜籽能被转变为生物燃料。
在丰厚补贴的驱动下，人们正在开发各种可替代能源——这是对地球未来一定程度的关注——欧洲农民正开始种植可转换为燃料的作物，这意味着比汽油或石油产生更少的排放物。他们正在追随美国同伴，后者种植用于生物燃料的作物已超过5年。
“这对我们的经济和农田，是一种急需的激励，”50岁的农民马赛罗.皮尼，站在他第一次种植的油菜籽田前面说，“当然，我们也希望这有助于环境。” 3月，对生物燃料产业成长缓慢感到失望的欧洲委员会，批准了一条包括“约束力目标”的指令，要求成员国到2020年时，生物燃料占运输用燃料的10％——这是世界上最雄心勃勃和具体的目标。
大部分欧洲国家还远远未实现这一目标，正引入激励和补贴，以提高产量。 结果，生物能源作物已取代粮食，成为几个欧洲国家最有利可图的作物。例如，意大利在这方面，政府保证以每100公斤22欧元或13.42美元的价格购买生物燃料作物——这几乎是2006年公开市场上每100公斤小麦11或12欧元价格的两倍。更好的是，农民可以在“搁置”地上种植生物燃料作物，欧洲的农业政策曾要求这些地休耕。
但是，联合国粮农组织召集的专家组指出，生物燃料热潮有利有弊，需要权衡——包括跌宕起伏的粮食价格波动。在一些市场，谷物价格已几乎翻番。
“一旦农产品价格降低，生物燃料就会进入，改善农民的命运，并给农村地区注入活力，”位于罗马的粮农组织专家古斯塔罗.贝斯特说。“但随着规模增长，对生物燃料作物的需求似乎无穷无尽，我们看到一些负面影响，需要举起黄灯。” 联合国世界粮食计划在2006年养活了近9000万人，其新领导人乔塞特希兰说生物燃料制造了新问题。“粮食价格的增长对我们造成了冲击，因为我们是粮食的主要生产者，”她说。“因此，生物燃料挑战与机遇并存。”
供应商说，在欧洲，成熟后的小麦或大麦改为像油菜籽那样的生物燃料作物，已经引起了制作意粉和酿造啤酒所需的配料短缺。这转化为了超级市场里更高的价格。
“对生物能源产品新的和不断增长的需求，已给整个世界粮食市场施加了高压，”意大利最大的意粉制造商之一、百得阿姨的发言人克劳迪亚科蒂说。“不仅德国的啤酒制造商，而且墨西哥的玉米饼生产者，都已注意到他们主要的原材料成本增长迅速，已达历史最高水平。”
一些专家更担心其对低收入消费者的潜在冲击。农业小组断定，在发展中国家，如果荒地转为种植生物燃料作物，这种以富国为目的、向更多高利润生物燃料作物转变的做法，可能造成严重的饥饿，并损害环境。
但欧洲委员会的官员说，他们正在寻求一种审慎的进程，它将避免在美国市场上看见的一些价格和供应问题。
欧洲农业和农村发展委员会的马里兰.菲舍尔.波伊尔，在最近一次演讲中说，