Tutorials/Sugar cane farming

Sugarcane Farming, also known as Reed Farming, is a way to quickly destroy a large number of Sugar Canes at one time.

Barebones Method
The barebones method of reed farming is much less resource intensive than the piston method. It consists of constructing a grass pyramid which water can flow through so reeds can grow on top. The water that flows throughout the pyramid is provided by one source block at the top. Removing that source block causes a chain reaction which makes all reed blocks that are adjacent to another block that is updated pop off the ground.

See a video tutorial here.

Piston method
This method uses pistons to push the canes into water canals which deliver the items into a single collection point. By using this method, replanting sugar canes isn't needed. Example of a simple sugar cane farm can be found there. -->

If you wish for this to be completely automated, you can use a redstone clock to make the pistons pulse repeatedly. However, this method will get you only one cane at a time in a somewhat inconsistent fashion. If you wish to harvest all of the canes simultaneously you can simply wire a button or lever to the pistons, or a 5 minute block despawn timer (Dispenser pointed directly at a wooden pressure plate with blocks stopping it from bouncing, will tick every 5 irl minutes). However, using this method can offset the growth after the 1.8 change of sugarcane growth speed. A more advanced way of farming sugarcane would be to connect them to BUD switches, which trigger them to be harvested. However, you cannot automatically collect the sugarcane with this farm, since the sugarcane are harvested from the top and land on the dirt blocks underneath. An example of this kind of farm can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNmlDx5y5fc

Water flow sugar cane farm method
This method is outdated with 1.7, but can still be used if you do not have pistons available. It uses redstone to update sugarcane that is no longer next to water to break it. You will need 10 sugarcane, 10 redstone dust, 1 water bucket, 1 button (or lever), and at least 20 solid blocks. This design produces 20 sugarcane per harvest, but you can modify it to produce more.