Spelt, Einkorn, and Ancient Cereal Varieties Still Grown in Italian Highlands

The three species that Italian speakers group under the name farro — einkorn (Triticum monococcum), emmer (Triticum dicoccum), and spelt (Triticum spelta) — are not recent additions to the Italian food landscape. They were the primary cereals of the Italian peninsula for at least two millennia before common wheat (Triticum aestivum) and durum wheat became dominant. What is less commonly understood is that their cultivation never entirely stopped.

The Three Species and Their Distinctions

In Italian agricultural and commercial terminology, farro piccolo refers to einkorn, farro medio to emmer, and farro grande to spelt. The three differ in hull structure, protein content, and yield. All three are hulled wheats — the grain remains enclosed in a tough glume after threshing, requiring an additional dehulling step before milling. This extra processing requirement contributed to their commercial displacement by free-threshing modern wheats in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when labour costs rose and industrial milling changed the economics of grain processing.

Botanically, the three species are distinct but closely related. Einkorn is a diploid (14 chromosomes); emmer is tetraploid (28 chromosomes); spelt is hexaploid (42 chromosomes, the same ploidy level as common wheat). The ploidy difference has practical implications for storage: hulled wheats keep well precisely because the glume protects the grain from insect damage and moisture. Archaeological grain recovered from Bronze Age pile-dwelling sites in northern Italy has been identified as emmer; its preservation state — viable enough to allow genetic analysis — testifies to the effectiveness of the hull as a natural barrier.

Emmer in the Garfagnana

The most thoroughly documented survival of ancient cereal cultivation in Italy is the emmer (farro medio) of the Garfagnana, the mountainous valley of the Serchio river in northern Tuscany. Emmer cultivation in Garfagnana is attested continuously in local agricultural records from the medieval period; it was never abandoned even during the 20th-century mechanisation of Italian agriculture, because the valley's steep terrain and small field sizes made large-scale mechanised cultivation of any crop impractical.

The granting of a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) — Farro della Garfagnana IGP — in 1996 formalised what had been an informal but continuous tradition. The PGI specification requires cultivation at altitudes between 300 and 1,000 metres in the defined geographical zone, and prohibits the use of chemical herbicides. Current cultivated area under the PGI specification is approximately 500 hectares, spread across some 80 producers.

The variety grown is distinct from the emmer used in experimental breeding programmes: Garfagnana farmers have maintained seed from their own stock, and genetic analysis published by IPSP-CNR (the National Research Council's Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection) in 2014 shows measurable genetic divergence from emmer populations elsewhere in Italy, consistent with prolonged geographical isolation.

Einkorn in the Abruzzo and Molise

Einkorn (farro piccolo) is the rarest of the three in commercial cultivation. Its yield is lower than emmer or spelt, and the grain is smaller and harder to mill on conventional equipment. Historically it was grown in the highest and most marginal zones of the central Apennines — the upper valleys of the Abruzzo and Molise — where its cold tolerance and ability to grow on thin soils gave it an advantage over other cereals.

By the 1970s, einkorn cultivation had contracted to a handful of villages in the Molise highlands, where it was grown mainly as a household crop rather than a commercial one. Its persistence there attracted attention from plant geneticists from the 1980s onwards; the Molise population is now maintained both by a small number of commercial producers and in the gene bank of the Council for Research in Agriculture and Agricultural Economics (CREA) in Rome.

The storage characteristics of einkorn are notably good. The thick hull is resistant to the grain weevil (Sitophilus granarius), the most common storage pest in Italian granaries historically. Several early modern agricultural manuals — including the 1561 Praedium Rusticum by Charles Estienne and Jean Liébault in its Italian editions — specifically recommend mixing einkorn with other stored grains to reduce weevil infestation in the wider store.

Spelt in the Northern Apennines and Campania

Spelt (farro grande) has a broader geographic distribution than einkorn or emmer in Italy, with documented cultivation in the northern Apennines, parts of Campania, and historically across much of the peninsula. Roman authors including Pliny the Elder and Columella treat spelt as the cereal of the early Republic, associated with ritual and sacrifice as much as with everyday food.

In the Caserta area of Campania, spelt cultivation persisted into the 20th century on the volcanic soils of the Matese massif. The grain was stored using the same underground pit methods described elsewhere in southern Italian agriculture — the hulled form kept particularly well in the foggia environment because the glume added an extra layer of protection against the humidity that was the primary risk in that storage system.

Storage Methods Specific to Hulled Wheats

The storage of hulled wheats differs from that of free-threshing wheats in one important respect: the grain is typically stored still in the hull, and dehulling is done in batches immediately before milling rather than at harvest time. This means that the granary buildings used for hulled wheats needed to accommodate a larger volume per unit of flour produced — roughly 30–40% more storage space for a given flour output compared with common wheat — but in exchange received much better natural protection against pests and moisture.

The mill itself also required a different configuration. The hull of emmer and spelt is too tough to be removed by ordinary millstones without damaging the grain; dedicated dehulling mills (trebbie) were used for a first pass before the grain went to the flour mill. Several examples of combined granary-and-dehulling-mill complexes survive in the Garfagnana, where the integration of storage and processing in a single building was common because the small scale of individual operations made separate facilities uneconomical.

Wooden model granary, Museo Egizio Turin – showing ancient grain storage architecture — Wooden model granary, Museo Egizio Turin (collection reference S 13270). Ancient grain storage models provide evidence for the long history of purpose-designed cereal storage architecture in the Mediterranean. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Current Status and Formal Protection

As of 2026, Italian highland cereal cultivation is protected under several overlapping frameworks. The Garfagnana emmer PGI is the most established. Spelt from various central Italian zones is registered under several municipal and regional quality designations. Einkorn has no formal geographical protection but is included in the national list of traditional food products maintained by the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MIPAAF), which provides a basis for regional funding support.

The FAO's Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture has included Italian hull wheat populations in its monitoring of plant genetic resources at risk, noting that the farm-saved seed stocks maintained by smallholders represent genetic diversity not captured in formal gene bank collections. This distinction matters for long-term resilience: gene bank accessions are snapshots; living cultivated populations continue to adapt in response to local conditions.