A big automatic sugar cane field: a slime-block flying machine sweeps over 460 sugar cane plants, and 20 hopper minecarts under the soil collect everything. Shulkercraft gives about 1,300 sugar cane per hour; our tests measured about 1,500.
This design works in Minecraft Java 1.16+.
Tick what you have gathered — it is remembered together with your step progress.
Dirt12 stacks + 56×824
Rail9 stacks + 24×600
Glass7 stacks + 50×498Sugar Cane7 stacks + 21×469
Powered Rail3 stacks + 8×200
Stone2 stacks + 44×172
Stone Slab1 stacks + 62126 waterlogged (add water)×126
Redstone Torch×62
Hopper×26
Minecart with Hopper×20
Slime Block×18
Chest×4
Sticky Piston×4
Observer×3
Obsidian×3
Redstone Comparator×2
Redstone Dust×2
Lever×1
Redstone Repeater×1
Spruce Trapdoor×1The flying machine works because slime blocks pull their neighbours along: an observer sees the sticky piston move and fires it again, step by step, until the machine hits obsidian, which pistons cannot move. At the north end an observer sends it back.
The hopper clock is two hoppers passing 320 items to each other (one item every 0.4 seconds). Each time one hopper runs empty, a comparator moves the redstone block, the trapdoor flips and the observer next to it starts the machine – about every two minutes.
Hopper minecarts collect items through a full block above them. Sugar cane grows only near a player (since 1.21.5 in any loaded chunk); stay close while it runs, because a flying machine that unloads mid-flight can break.
In our tests it made about 1,500 sugar cane per hour on 1.17.1, 1.21.11 and 26.3. In one of four hour-long runs (1.21.11) the machine stopped early and the farm made only 52 per hour – if the harvest stops, check that the machine is back at the south end in one piece.
~1,512 Sugar Cane/h — Measured on 26.3 (Oct 15, 2026). Measured with our automated test on a local Minecraft server (fake player at the AFK spot); your rate depends on render distance, difficulty and surroundings.
Download the original The schematic / world is offered by the creator or the tutorial author — we link to the original download.
Instead of one piston per plant, this farm harvests the whole 20 × 35 field with one flying machine: two rows of slime blocks moved by sticky pistons and observers. Every couple of minutes a hopper clock sends the machine across the field; it breaks every sugar cane above its bottom block and flies back.
The drops land on the dirt. Under the dirt, 20 hopper minecarts ride up and down their own rail lanes and pick the items up through the block, then unload them into hoppers and two double chests at the south end.
