Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
6. Crop Farming
In This Chapter
Become self-sufficient with your first crops and optimize your farm.
Learn the secrets of hydration—it doesn't take much to do a lot.
Harvest your farm with one click of a button.
Build a fully automated water harvester.
Farming is fun. There, I said it. I don't mean turning your Minecraft character into Farmer
Joe,chompingonastalkofwheatwhilesloppingoutapigsty.ImeanfarmingtheMinecraft
way.
Farming in Minecraft refers to any system that creates renewable resources. This concept
goes well beyond a simple wheat field. It includes growing a host of different crops that all
have a specific purpose and creating fully automated hands-off harvesting systems. In this
chapter, I'll take you through the elements of a crop farm and how to transform harvesting
from a multiclick chore to one push of a button or twitch of a lever.
Choosing a Crop
Given you can farm just about anything, you may be wondering where to start. Let's go for
the basics first because you can easily branch out from there.
Wheat is the most useful to farm initially as three wheat sheaves crafted into bread forms a
useful food staple, and wheat is also used for breeding, sheep and mooshrooms and taming
horses. It's also easy to get started for two reasons:
You can find the seeds just about anywhere by knocking down tall grass.
Wheat will grow quite happily without water, although it does grow faster with hy-
dration available.
First find your seeds. You don't need many. When harvested, all growable crops drop up to
three times as many seeds as they take to plant. This means you can start with a small stock
andquicklyexpandyourplantationastheplantsmature.Justharvest,replant,andrepeatun-
til the crop reaches your target size. Under optimal conditions, the crop will reach maturity
in two to three day/night cycles.
Before you get started, here are some tips to keep in mind:
All crops except cocoa beans grow faster when planted near water.
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