How to Build an Automatic Crop Farm

The farm works for the four crops a farmer villager tends: wheat, carrots, potatoes and beetroots. A water-flush design without villagers follows the build.

See the 3D build: Automatic Wheat Farm 17×8×17 · 1071 blocks, layer by layer

How the farmer fills your chest

A farmer tends crops only during its working hours and cannot till, so you make all the farmland. At its Composter it bakes up to 3 Bread at a time from its Wheat, composts spare seeds while keeping at least 10 of each kind, and takes out Bone Meal to use on young crops.

It has only eight inventory slots. To a villager, a Carrot, Potato or Beetroot is worth 1 nutrition point and Bread is worth 4. Once a farmer holds 24 points or more, it throws food at a villager it is talking to, outside its working hours. From its first stack of more than 24 items, it throws half if the stack holds more than 32, otherwise enough to leave 24. It also throws Wheat once it holds more than half a stack. Shut a second villager in a cell within about two blocks of a tile the farmer walks on, catch what lands between them, and a Chest fills itself.

Build it step by step

1. 1.Lay the field. Flatten a 9×9 plot, dig out the centre block and fill it from a Water Bucket. Water hydrates farmland up to four blocks away horizontally, so that source covers the other 80 tiles. Don't till yet.
2. 2.Hang the Composter over the water. The water under it still hydrates the field. A block can't be placed against water, so set a temporary block beside the hole, place the Composter against its side, break the temporary block, then till. The Composter recipe takes seven wooden slabs.
3. 3.Build the collection column. Just past the middle tile of one side, where the wall will run, put a Chest one block below farmland level with a Hopper on top. Put a Rail on the Hopper and a Minecart with Hopper on it. Set a temporary block with a Rail directly above, place a second cart there and break the block so the carts stack. Cap the column with an Oak Trapdoor so villagers cannot walk through the carts.
4. 4.Wall it, roof it and add a Lightning Rod. Build walls two blocks high, with the column as one wall block, and roof it over. Walls and roof together keep out rabbits, which eat ripe carrots. Outside Peaceful, lightning within four blocks of a villager turns it into a witch, even through a roof this low, so set a Lightning Rod on a post at least six blocks from the walls, with nothing above it. In Java Edition it draws natural lightning within 128 blocks.
5. 5.Light the inside. The roof blocks sky light, and a crop needs light level 9 at its own block to grow. In Java Edition a crop at level 7 or lower uproots. Set Glowstone or Sea Lanterns into the walls at crop height beside the third and seventh tile of each side, and one more on top of the Composter. A Torch or Lantern will not stay on its hollow top.
6. 6.Add the farmer. Bring an unemployed villager in through a gap in the wall, let it claim the Composter, trade with it once to lock the profession, then close the gap. The villager jobs and workstations list covers claiming.
7. 7.Add the collector. Build a one-block cell behind the column with any job block except a Composter in its wall. Let a second villager walk in and claim it, trade with it once, then close the cell. Once locked, it can never take the farmer's Composter. A nitwit also works: it never takes a job.
8. 8.Seed it. Throw the farmer a stack of one crop. It picks items up from within 4 blocks and plants every empty farmland tile it reaches. Stick to one crop: it plants from the first eligible slot in its inventory, not the crop it just harvested.

Which crop to grow

A novice farmer gets two of its five starting trades, so not every farmer buys every crop. Carrots and potatoes are the easiest villager crops because each is its own seed. A wheat farmer bakes some of its harvest into Bread, so expect both. Villagers never pick up a Poisonous Potato; it despawns after five minutes.

How fast it grows

Each crop block gets a random tick about once every 68 seconds by default, and each tick may push it up one stage, with odds set by water and planting pattern.

Times are for wheat, carrots and potatoes. Beetroots, with four stages, ripen in about two-thirds of the time. A villager farm is one crop planted solid, so expect the middle row, plus a boost from the farmer's Bone Meal. Crops grow only in chunks within your simulation distance or otherwise kept loaded, so the farm pauses when you travel.

The water-flush alternative

Flowing water breaks crops for their normal drops and leaves the farmland intact. A Dispenser holding a Water Bucket fires only when its power switches on: one pulse places a source and the next takes it back. One button press floods the field and a second dries it, but a lever left on fires the Dispenser just once. The Automatic Wheat Farm build lays out a nine-by-nine bed with a water channel down the middle, a row of Hoppers under it and eighteen water-bucket Dispensers, one for every column on both sides, all wired to a single Stone Button. Each column needs its own Dispenser because flowing water heads straight for the nearest drop within four blocks, here the channel, instead of spreading sideways.

It does not replant, and an unripe crop drops only one item: a seed, a Carrot or a Potato. Flood a wheat field when about four in five crops are ripe; that is acceptable for carrots and potatoes too.

Common mistakes

• Jumping on farmland. A player or mob that jumps or falls onto farmland can turn it back to dirt. Keep the field flat so the farmer never has to jump.
• Skipping the collector. A farmer keeps harvesting with a full inventory and leaves what it cannot hold on the ground.
• Mob griefing turned off. With /gamerule mob_griefing false, farmers cannot plant, harvest or pick anything up.

Where the harvest goes

• Sell it to farmers at the rates above; the villager trading guide covers prices and restocks.
• Feed a villager breeder: 12 Carrots, Potatoes or Beetroots, or 3 Bread, make a villager willing to breed.
• Compost spare seeds into Bone Meal, the loop in the composter and bone meal guide.
• Melons and pumpkins are not farmer crops; the melon and pumpkin farm guide uses Observers and Pistons instead.