How to Start a Farm in Minecraft

12tails Team
July 22, 2025
5-10 minutes
BeginnerVersion 1.21+
How to Start a Farm in Minecraft

Are you ready to boost your Minecraft adventure? One of the best ways to thrive in the game is to start a farm in Minecraft. A farm will give you a steady supply of essential resources, like food and crafting materials, making your gameplay much easier. In this guide, we'll walk you through the simple steps to set up a small farm that will meet your needs during the early stages of the game. You'll learn what crops to plant, how to care for them, and tips for expanding your farm later on. So grab your tools, and let’s dive into the world of farming in Minecraft!

Planting Crops for Food

One of the first crops you can plant in Minecraft is wheat. You can grow wheat from seeds and those seeds can be easily collected by harvesting grass, which grows in most biomes above ground. Just run around clicking on grass for a few minutes and you'll have plenty of seeds.

The best way to organize your farming plot is in a 9x9 grid with a single block of water dug in the middle. That's because crops grow best when planted in irrigated spaces, and a single block of water will irrigate all farm plots up to four blocks away.

Just dig a hole and fill it with water using an iron bucket. Then plant your seeds in all of the squares in your grid. You'll be able to plant up to 80 seeds this way.

Minecraft 9x9 wheat farm
A simple and standard 9x9 plot wheat farm with a single block of water in the center for irrigation.

You can plant many more crops than just wheat, but first you'll need to obtain the seeds. The best place to get different seeds is from farms in nearby villages. When you locate a village in Minecraft, it will have at least one or two small gardens, usually with a variety of planted crops that can include:

  • Beetroot
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes
  • Pumpkins
  • Melons

Taming and Raising Animals

Your farm will be even more useful if it includes animals, and there are plenty that you can tame and raise in Minecraft. Some of the easiest animals to include on your farm in the early stages of Minecraft include chickens, pigs, cows, and sheep.

It's best to put your tamed animals inside an enclosure. The most popular type of enclosure is a wooden fence. You just need to make sure you install a wooden gate somewhere along the fence so that you can get in and out yourself. Another alternative is to use stone or dirt blocks to form a wall, but you'll need to make the wall at least two blocks high to prevent the animals from climbing out.

Minecraft animals in a pen
Cows, sheep, and pigs together in a simple fenced-in pen.

Animals don't need to be fed to survive. They'll be quite content inside their enclosure. But when you want to increase your livestock through breeding, you need to feed them. Simply equip the food (for example, wheat seeds for chickens) and then right-click on two adult animals. Little hearts will form above their heads and soon, a baby animal will appear.

Food needed to breed different animals in Minecraft

AnimalFoodChickenSeedsCowWheatPigCarrotsSheepWheat

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