These two grains are the same thing, although sometimes what is labeled as “farro” is not 100% farro. I managed to track down enough seed from Lentz Spelt Farm in Washington State to plant one acre. Emmer is a spring-sown crop. The seed arrived last week, and we planted it a couple of days later. The seed is contained in a husk, which we leave on for sowing. Roberto and Cory spent a couple of hours calibrating the seeder to make sure we sowed the seed at precisely the right density. To make sure we had the seed hoppers distributing the seed at the right rate, we had to calculate how much seed one hopper should drop in 100 feet. Rene from Lentz Spelt farm said to sow 180 lb per acre. There are ten beds to an acre, each 675' long. We sow 12 rows on a bed, each hopper sows 2 rows. My caculations showed we needed to drop 0.48lbs of seed in 100'. The variables here are the speed of travel, size of the hole in the seeding unit and the speed of the brushes in the seeding unit pushing out the seed.
It took longer to set up the seeder than it did to sow the whole acre but we now know are settings so next year we just have to run a check in case the seed size changed slightly.
The crop was irrigated after planting and is already germinating.