How to Build an Automatic Cactus Farm in Minecraft 1.16

It’s incredibly easy to build an automatic cactus farm in Minecraft. In fact, this design is so simple that it doesn’t even require any redstone at all! 

How This Cactus Farm Works

A cactus will be broken if it comes into direct contact with any other block. This automatic cactus farm utilises this mechanic to allow growing cacti to be automatically broken as soon as they grow. A fence post will block the cactus from hitting the opposite cactus so it doesn’t get destroyed and it will allow the cactus to pass down to the water flow pushing it into your storage system.

What You’ll Need To Build A Cactus Farm

To build this automatic cactus farm as a single layer on ground floor you’ll need the following:

• 80 glass blocks
• 40 of a block of your choice (I use smooth stone in the video)
• 16 cacti
• 16 sand blocks
• 8 fences
• 4 water buckets
• 2 chests
• 1 hopper

Note that the above materials are the simplest way to make this farm. It can also be layered as high as you wish for a faster cactus production and with as many hoppers and chests as you wish to increase the amount you can collect overall.

Simplest Way to Build A Cactus Farm

So, let’s look at the simplest way to build a cactus farm and then we can look at how you can increase its efficiency with additional layers. You’ll need to start with an 11×11 square outline on flat ground. In the center of the square outline dig down 3 blocks and clear out 2 additional adjacent spaces. This is for the double chest and hopper, which we’ll later tunnel down to. 

Now we’ll add the sand. Starting from the top left inner corner, 1 down and 1 to the right from the outer square, place a sand block in every other space. You’ll end up with a grid of single sand blocks which you’ll place the cacti on later.

The fences that will break the growing cacti need to be placed 3 blocks up from ground level so that they’ll float 1 space higher than the cacti. When a cactus grows and ‘comes into contact’ with the fence post the cactus will break. Each fence post can break 2 cacti so you’ll just need 1 between each pair. Once these are in place you can place a cactus on each of the sand blocks.

Finish off the cactus farm by placing water down in each of the four corners and with a 2 high glass wall on top of the existing square outline. The glass wall is optional but I think it looks quite nice. Now you’ll just need to tunnel underneath the farm to the double chest.

Multi-Layer Cactus Farm

Adding layers to the cactus farm is very simple although there is one thing you need to be aware of. The base of the second layer should be made from top slabs so that the cacti below can grow. Simply place a block on top of 1 of the fences, place a top slab on the side and then remove the block on the fence. 

Continue to fill out the base of the next layer (9×9) with top slabs and outline it with a duplicate of the original 11×11 square. From there you can just copy what you have below and then layer up and up and up for more efficiency.

I hope this article helped you. I’ve got many more guides on my Youtube Channel and we’ve got many more articles under the Vanilla Minecraft category here on Noobforce.net.