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.

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. So it would be considered more efficient and effective to operate this off a one click lever at the users wish. If you wish to harvest all of the canes simultaneously you can simply wire a button or lever to the pistons.

Another video (with an English commentary) on this design can be found by clicking here

Instead of usign water canals to deliver the items to the player, gravity can be used for a way faster retrieval, building a vertical tower farm, as shown in the following video:

Completely automated design
With the introduction of hoppers and comparators in the Redstone Update, it is now possible to set up a completely automated sugar cane farm based of the piston method that leaves the base cane to continue growing. A dispenser based clock can be fed via hopper (or dropper, depending on vertical level) chain directly from the farm output. A comparator can be used to measure when the last hopper begins to fill with items, triggering a secondary chain of hoppers to feed further harvest into a chest for pickup. A T-flop can be used to trigger the farm every ten minutes, or a counter can be used to pick any increment of 5, for better efficiency. Note: A pulse limiter is needed between the T-flop or counter output and the farm pistons, else the pistons will simply stay in the extended position and inhibit growth.

Semi-automated design
Тростниковая ферма