Farmers that harvest wheat and has no means of throwing bread away will eventually empty their fields, leaving bare farmland.
Description:
When a farmer has tended a wheat field for a long time, the farmer will eventually stop resowing the farmland with seeds, leaving instead only empty farmland. In time, the area of farmland may be emptied entirely of crop.
I suspect it may be because farmers inventory become occupied with wheat, leaving no space to pick up seeds. The farmer is expected o pick up seeds along with the harvest, which ought to prevent an inventory slot from becoming entirely empty. Nevertheless, it seems to be what is happening.
I attach 3 pictures showing the issue. I made 4 fields of farmland and gave 4 farmers different prerequisites in order to accentuate the error. Tick speed is 10, and pictures show the progression over roughly one hour:
On top left, farmer is given 1 stack of seeds. We see the farmer planting, harvesting and resowing. No issues show up.
On top right, farmer is given a full inventory of seeds, 8 stacks and a resupply once the field is planted. We see the farmer harvesting and replanting, with excess wheat piling up on the ground, also excess bonemeal.
On bottom left, farmer is given 1 stack of seeds and 7 stacks of wheat. We see the farmer harvesting and replanting for a short while, then suddenly harvesting but not replanting. Seeds are seen left on the ground, but wheat is still picked up. Possibly because the farmer has wheat in all 8 inventory slots.
On bottom right, farmer is given 7 stacks of seeds and 1 stack of wheat. Behaves same as top right.
Issue may possibly be seen in continuation of MCPE-123412 (solved). However, crop is no longer lost, since it may now be picked up by the player. In this ticket, the harvested crop may also be picked up by the player, but the farmer does not replant.
To reproduce:
Create a field of farmland, possibly 9x9. Create a farmer, and bed and composter. Give the farmer wheat seeds. Wait.
Farmer keeps on harvesting and replanting wheat. As time goes (many hours at tick speed 1), and the farmer does not have opportunity to throw away any bread, the wheat is at some time left on the ground, indicating a full inventory.
Expected result from here:
Farmer keeps on harvesting and regrowing, leaving excess wheat and seeds on the ground.
Observed result:
At some time, farmer keeps on harvesting but does not replant. Fields becomes empty.
Attachments
Comments 10
Yes, it should not be able to happen.
However, look at the related issue I reported here:
Harvesting brings in 0-3 seeds, not 1-4. Harvesting also brings in only 1½ seeds on average. Combined with the farmer's ability to compost seeds, there is a possibility - however unlikely - that at some point the farmer may have an empty inventory slot while harvesting. And when it does happen, it is irreversible. Over a long stretch of time, it may become unavoidable.
The chance of getting 0 seeds is 1/10. To empty a whole stack of seeds you would need to get 64 more 0’s than 1’s, 2’s or 3’s over time. The chance of that happening is much too small to be reproducible as readily as you have reproduced this bug. I am sure there has to be some other explanation.
Just adding a +1 on this. Our world similarly broke with the 1.19.70 update (its a BDS server, and the current .73 client works with it, so we haven't updated yet). On .63, everything worked fine. Within an hour of game time on the .70 server, our fields were essentially empty as the three farmers in our primary village were harvesting but stopped replanting. (This included carrots and wheat.)
Throwing down seeds, they don't get picked up. They did appear to be picking up the wheat and carrots harvested, however, as the number left floating to be picked up was a small fraction of the total field sizes.
I did some more testing. Observations:
The bottom left farmer, who was given 1 stack of seeds and 7 stacks of wheat, is not so mysterious after all. The farmer was placed in a 9x9 field, and - naturally- used up the entire stack of seeds planting that field. Then, the first time the farmer harvested wheat, there would have been a 50/50 chance of the 8th inventory slot being occupied by wheat, eliminating the possibility of picking up any seeds. but, this only happens when the farmer has 7 inventory slots filled with wheat already and exhaustes the supply of seeds due to being in an environment where a lot of empty farmland is ready to be planted. So this test did not really reproduce what I see in survival.
I observed that farmers do a lot of composting with seeds. Even when the farmer has only a single stack of seeds in inventory. A farmer I observed made three bonemeal while having been given only one stack of seeds, meaning the farmer may have spent most of the stack. I also observed that when left alone, the composter may have bonemeal on top for quite a long time before the farmer picks it up, possibly limiting the amount of seeds the farmer may put into it, decreasing the chances of exhausting the inventory. Autoharvesting bonemeal from the composter by means of a hopper may allow for the farmer to drop more seeds into the composter, possibly allowing for the situation to happen where the farmer has close to 0 seeds in inventory while harvesting.
But still, I notice that it happens in my survival world, where the farmer has a lot of empty inventory slots, which - as mentioned by GoldenHelmet - should not make the occurrence very likely at all.
Just at thought. Possibly - if the inventory of the farmer works the same way as a dispenser (randomly selects which inventory slot to output from) - then that might contribute to the likelihood of the situation occurring where a farmer exhausts multiple inventory slots by composting seeds. Still does not explain how the farmers exhausts the individual slot though.
I'm having the same issue (on Xbox One).
In v1.16 (pre-Caves & Cliffs Part 1 update). I made all the farms (2) in my plains village wheat farms. Had no issues, farmland planted & excess wheat & seeds left on the ground to despawn.
After being forced to upgrade to v1.19.73, my other village (1.16 loaded plains/hillside village) in which I replanted all to carrots, saw farmers able to raise the level of a composter, but they kept stealing the bonemeal I made in their composters. 😑
After v1.91.81 in my main plains village, farmers weren't stealing bonemeal anymore.
But somewhere around v1.19.81-1.19.83, my issue popped up.
Playing survival hard (shouldn't matter) and started going in/out of nearby nether portal.
Farmers now break fully-grown wheat and still leave wheat & seeds to despawn, BUT they aren't replanting. Also their composters are fully empty.
My farmers should only have seeds and/or wheat and/or bread in their inventory. I believe they only compost seeds?
In 1.16 if there was a blackout, I'd lose a few mobs/villagers, then they'd share wheat/bread & spawn baby villagers. With 1.19 I'm not losing villagers, so perhaps every villagers' inventory is full as well?
When player harvests wheat, the wheat is always picked up first (at least for me).
Also what stops a farmer villager from composting all their seeds?
Trying to test.
Player can compost seeds, wheat & bread.
My current plains village farmer won't pick up bonemeal, seeds or wheat. Only took 10-15 bread before that too wasn't picked up.
Destroyed all job tables (left composters) and boated farmers. New farmer (job switched) was harvesting wheat & planting seeds.
Seems like simple fix is for farmers to compost bread if say inventory greater than 50.
Thank you for your report!
However, this issue has been temporarily closed as Awaiting Response.
Is this still an issue in the latest version? If yes, could you please add it to the affected versions (or mention it if you are not the reporter)?
This ticket will automatically reopen when you reply.
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I can confirm that this is still an issue for current Bedrock v1.20.51.
In a village I eradicated all potatoes and carrots and made the farmers plant wheat only. After a while, the farmers stopped planting seeds and the fields became empty.
With an NBT editor I saw that all farmers´ inventory slots are occupied with beetroot, wheat and bread.
They do work and harvest crops I plant for them, but they do not pick any seeds up. In survival mode, there seems to be no legal way to get the farmers planting again (except imposing a death sentence for greediness and laziness).
I don’t doubt this happens, but it’s hard to understand how it can happen, because the farmer should replenish its seeds with almost every wheat that it harvests. It should always have near to a full stack of seeds. I wonder if it switches item stacks to its hand when picking up?