There are many items in Minecraft that have obvious uses. Players will need to gather food in order to survive, and weapons and armor can help the player protect themselves and defeat their enemies. For every one of these items, though, there is something less obvious. Sugar Cane is one such example of an extremely useful item that players might not think is all that important at first. The item is only used for two crafting recipes, but both of these are important and players will end up finding themselves in need of a lot of Sugar Cane as they play.
Putting a single Sugar Cane in the crafting menu will craft Sugar, a food ingredient that can be used to make items like cake, pumpkin pie, and even potions of speed. Alternatively, if players put three Sugar Cane in a row on a crafting table, they can make three paper, an item that Minecraft players need to make books, banner patterns, cartography tables, maps, fireworks, and more.
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In order to farm Sugar Cane, there are a few things players must know about the plant. First, Sugar Cane can only be planted on grass, dirt, coarse dirt, moss, podzol, sand, or red sand, and only if that block is directly adjacent to water (waterlogged blocks and frosted ice work as well). When the player plants a single piece of Sugar Cane, it will grow over time until it reaches a maximum height of three blocks tall. At this point, players can simply break all but the lowest block of Sugar Cane and the growing process will repeat.
Sugar Cane is not affected by light, meaning it can be farmed in complete darkness if the player should choose to do so. If left unchecked, a Sugar Cane crop will grow about one block every 18 minutes, but this process can be sped up with bonemeal (Bedrock Edition only). Finally, there are two primary methods for setting up a Sugar Cane farm, either using rows or grids. In the row example, players will create a row of water, planting Sugar Cane on either side of the water, whereas the grid formation sees each block of water surrounded by four Sugar Cane.
The row setup is much easier to use, as players aren't as likely to fall into the water while they are trying to harvest Sugarcane, but this is also not the most efficient. By contrast, the grid setup is the most efficient way to farm Sugar Cane, but players will need to take care not to fall into the water holes. To remedy this issue, they can place lily pads or carpets over top the water.
Minecraft is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.