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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.

“At a time when agricultural prices are low, in comes biofuel and improves the lot of farmers and injects life into rural areas,” said Gustavo 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.