I go with 16 by 16 redstone lamp auto-harvest style. If you go 10 levels are more, by the time you harvest and replant all 10, 1 at a time, the first level is ready to harvest again.

 

It only requires 7 levels to be fully grown on the first level.

 

Wheat only grows in the chuck your in, well that's what I have noticed. A 4 chuck farm would work but it would have to be very tall. One chuck farms only need to be 10-15 floors max cause the whole farm is growing at once. Meaning that one chuck farms are cheaper to build and more effecicent. The one chuck not including the farm walls btw. So the farm would be 18 by 18 with the wheat floors in one chuck.

 

I would be very curious to see how efficient a multiple chunk wheat farm would be. I have a single (16x16) chunk by 12-ish layer farm, autoharvested with redstone lamps, but I guess that a multi-chunk farm would also work, since most of the growing on other layers happens while planting the layer just harvested. I would guess that a multi-chunk farm would still need the same number of layers...wondering if the restone would work for 1 switch, 2+ chunks tho.

PS: my farm makes about 8.5k per harvest cycle...including selling excess seeds.

 

The more chunks the less harvets.... :p with my 16x16 10 floor I can get on average 2-4 harvests an day and 3k each harvest

 

I'm having a 50x50 Wheat farm, it's pretty good.

However if i could undo something i would've made it on a 16x16 plot. :)

 

All chunk aligned form should be equally efficient if you have the 7 (estimate) levels to grow while you are harvesting or planting. As long as you harvest entire chunks, be it 1 or 4 or 8 you will spend an equivalent amount of time in each chunk for each harvest and therefore impart the same amount of "influence" on the growth rates of farms above and below.

Here are a couple of factors that may change the number of levels that are required to ensure that when you harvest the last field (by level) that the first field will be ready to harvest again:

1 - auto harvest (more levels) or manual harvest (less levels)
2 - speed donation (more levels)

the above items impact the amount of time spent in a field and hence the growth "influence" of your presence

another factor that will impact farm readiness is the potential to have multiple people harvesting on different levels at the same time. If this occurs some fields may not be ready as an empty field (just harvested) will not be growing, even with the presence of someone planting below.

Hope this was helpful

 

To try to explain a little better. If you have 8 farms stacked, and one person harvesting. You start at bottom and after you harvest and replant each in succession the 1st floor that you harvested will be fully grown again.

However if you have 2 people harvesting, then the growth rate increases, but for some time the growth rate will only be applied to the 6 fields that you did not harvest at the same time. 2 people harvesting at the same time would effectively cut in half the amount of time to harvest and replant the entire stack. Now this may be ok if the influence on growth rates is doubled because 2 people are in the same place, but i don't think this is the case. If there is some smaller influence level with 2 people than 2x say 1.7 then you would not have full fields following a complete harvest and replant.

On another note, if you had 14 floors and 2 people harvesting, your first field harvested may be done before you get finished your 7th since you would have 2 people with their own "set" of farms.

Hope this helps.

 

How do you make a lamp auto harvester?

 

Wheat needs light to grow. If there are no sources of light, the wheat will harvest. So, if you fully inclose a field and have lamp lighting via switch, you can harvest instantly.

 

You can't make a netherwart farm in the mainworld (well right now you cant) just letting you know

 

With my restone lamp autoharvest wheat farm, I do the following actions:
1. go to bottom level
2. turn off lights (lever on wall redstone wired to all lamps in ceiling)
3. all wheat and seeds, within 3 seconds, harvest and lay on floor
4. begin replanting ('A' + hold Left Click for one row, back up one row, 'D' + hold left click, rinse and repeat)
5. all seeds and wheat is picked up as I replant
6. /sell hand every 2 floors for wheat, /sell hand every 4 floors for seeds

You are correct, water harvesting IS cheaper...but takes longer to cycle {{open water, let water sweep harvest, turn off water, wait for water to dissapate (sp?)}}. So "Time = Money" , which one do you want to spend? *grin*

As for more floors, once you get to the point where the first level is ready when you finish the last, how many more levels do you need? My redstone version starts at bedrock and goes ~80 blocks above my ground level. layer of dirt, 3 air, 1 cobble and lamps 2, air (for redstone), another layer of dirt and repeat.