I’m pretty laid back so not usually in a hurry. I have shovels spec on my farmer. Always work great for me. I feel they have a good speed to them without speed being forged on them. If you on I can give you one to try.
Later edit: Now, every Wednesday, I am harvesting and re-planting my farm. I found that the optimal for me is the following:
I have 16 rows (x396) or kindling (6336)
I have 14 rows (x396) of combustion (5544)
I use a topaz with AoE only and the skills as in the screen shot
I use 1 persisting pie and 3 mega fast brews (1 brew allows me to re-seed 10 rows (3960 seeds))
The skill in the screenshot is for both harvesting and re-seeding - I can upload the complete picture later on but these are the ones really making a difference in performance.
I did not count the harvesting time but it went quick by running - I did have skipped plants on the harvest but it is easy to fix
Re-seeding takes 45 minutes presumably (3x15 min?) - no skipped plants - but small pause needed every 100 plants. Every 15 minutes I need to “rest my hand”.
I do the seeding from perpendicular position to the rows and 2-3 blocks away
I hope that in the end, this thread helps new people into getting into efficient handling of large inorganic farms. It was a learning experience for me as well.
Future steps:
planning to add white decorative gravel where the 100 plants breaks should happen and seed those before starting the “main seeding” - should add very little time but gain a lot when running with mega speed
I could add “guiding rails” but I find that I can handle just fine without - I can keep a straight line.
I personally don’t keep inorganic crops anymore (i removed everything in my skill page related to farming a long time ago). semi-auto farms? (easy farms in a 3x3 space spread out across a large area) to make the workload less. around 2-4 per plot