Tutorials/Wheat farming


 * ''This page is about wheat farming. For information on the systematic production of other resources, see Renewable Resources.

Farming is a feature in Indev, Infdev, Alpha and Beta implemented on February 6th, 2010. It allows players to create farmland, plant seeds and harvest crops of Wheat. Seeds can be found by using a hoe on grass tiles.

Farming Technique
Craft a hoe. Hoes will last longer depending on what materials they are crafted with. The hoe can be used to till dirt or grass into farmland by right-clicking. The dirt will become tilled and look dry. Any farmland blocks near water will become hydrated, which causes crops to grow faster. Using a hoe on grass tiles has a chance to produce seeds, which can be planted in tilled farmland blocks to grow into wheat. Seeds planted on dry farmland will still grow, but not as quickly. Bone Meal, when used on crops, fertilizes the tile and instantly makes the tile ready for harvest. This way you can harvest wheat right after planting seeds, making the process of farming much faster. Crops can also be grown at night by placing torches next to them. This will also prevent Mobs from spawning near them.

Notch has stated that some patterns of crops are more productive than others.

Wet Farmland Tiles
A hydrated Farmland block is the preferred land for farming. Wet farmland will yield a fully developed wheat crop in a little over a single day cycle on a Normal or Woodland themed map.

For a 'Farmland Block' (the block of farmland on which the hoe has been used to create a farmland block) to turn from dry to wet, a few rules apply:


 * 1) The Farmland Block requires water at the same level, or one block above to hydrate. Water one block below will not work.
 * 2) The Farmland Block requires water up to four blocks away, including diagonals.
 * 3) Intervening materials, or lack thereof, between the water and the Farmland Block make no difference.

For example, in a nine by nine grid of Farmland blocks, with the very central block being water, all will hydrate.

Farmland tile decay
A farmland tile will disappear:


 * If the player or an animal walks on it too much. (As of the patch on September 18th, 2010, Holding the Shift button while walking will allow you to crouch, which stops you from crushing your crops while walking on top of them. This doesn't work in SMP) See Sneaking.
 * If it stays dehydrated for too long.
 * In Infdev a farmland tile cannot decay if something is planted on it unless something walks on it or the farmland tiles are in absolute darkness.

After this, it will be reverted to a dirt brick.

If you do want to return a farmland block to its previous condition, you only need to remove anything that is planted in it, then wait for the farmland tile to revert back to a dirt block, which will allow grass to grow on top.

Harvesting
Crops can be harvested at any time by using the left-click of any tool, but will only yield wheat when the crop turns yellow and has no green left on the tips (not pictured in the image below). Harvesting crops at this time will yield between zero to three seeds, and one item of wheat, which can be crafted into Bread.



Note: In earlier versions of the game, such as /indev/, wheat ceased growing one stage earlier (0x6 in the above image), at which point you were able to harvest wheat.

A ready to harvest crop of wheat.



Crops may be ready to harvest, except they still look too young to harvest. A player can place and/or remove a torch to force the neighboring tiles to visually update immediately, instead of at the timely pace of the game. This technique doesn't do anything more than update the look of the crops, which occurs naturally through harvesting neighboring crops.

Requirements
Crops will only grow if they are receiving at least 9 light and there is at least one block of space above them.

Crops will be destroyed if the block they were planted on is no longer tilled.

As stated above, nearby water is beneficial but not strictly required.

Growth Rate
For the fastest growth, watered farmland with crops on all neighboring squares or in rows is ideal. This increases the growth rate amount to the maximum of 4.5, as described below in pseudocode. This is then used every time the crop block ticks which will then grow if a random number generated from zero up to int(100/growthRate) is zero. function GetGrowthRate if BlockBelowWatered then growthRate = 3.0f else growthRate = 1.0f for neighbor in GetHorizontalNeighbors if IsCrop(neighbor) then if BlockBelowWatered(neighbor) then growthRate += 0.75f else growthRate += 0.25f if (CropsOnXNeighbors and CropsOnYNeighbors) or CropsOnXYNeighbors then growthRate = growthRate / 2.0f return growthRate

Optimal Patterns
The following crop placement patterns all lead to an optimal growth rate of 4.5f for the middle block:





A Sub-optimal Pattern
The following crop placement will lead to halved growth rate for the middle block (see last part of pseudo code in previous section):



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