How to make cactus farm in Minecraft Bedrock

Cactus farms in Minecraft are more useful than they might first seem. While cactus, as a material, has only a few niche uses, such as turning into green dye, breeding camels, and having a 50% chance to advance composter level, being able to automatically harvest and smelt the plant is useful for XP farming. The XP gathered as cactus smelts will be stored in a furnace until you collect it en masse.

Everything you need to know about making a simple, expandable, and automated cactus farm for super smelter XP banking can be found detailed below.

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How to make a starter cactus farm in Minecraft Bedrock

Materials

The materials needed for this simple cactus farm (Image via Mojang)

Since cactus will automatically break when next to another block, Minecraft cactus farms are incredibly cheap to make.

There's no need to design, or build, networks of Minecraft observers and pistons to harvest items. The most expensive part of the build are the two hoppers used, which makes this a very easy farm to build early on.

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1) Create a box

The farm's simple slab outline (Image via Mojang)

The first thing you'll need to do is make an 11x11 slab outline. This will mark the outside boundries of the farm and will stop the water within the Minecraft build from running everywhere. Adding a second row of slabs a block above the first one will stop mobs from wandering in, but this is totally optional.

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2) Add a simple collection system

The inside of the farm's simple collection system (Image via Mojang)

Once you've created this outline, move to the exact center of the inner square and dig down a few blocks. Add a double chest, and then Minecraft hoppers leading into it. Place hoppers until they are flush with the ground that you started digging this hole from.

Mine outwards five blocks and then make a staircase or ladder upwards. This will make it possible to easily access this Minecraft farm later on, so that you can collect the produced cactus.

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3) Add the farm's internals

This internals of this farm are incredibly cheap (Image via Mojang)

Once you've added the collection area, it's time to add the guts of the farm. You'll first want to place and then open a gate above the hopper. This will stop water but allow items through. Then, place down sand blocks so that they are one block away from all surrounding blocks, including the edges of the farm.

Next, place a water source block in each corner of the square outline made in the first step. This should cause the water to flow around the placed sand blocks, with everything eventually leading to the central hopper.

The final part of the farm's internals is to go through and use temporary blocks to add fence posts between the sand columns. Make sure to place the fence posts one block higher than the sand. These fence posts will break the cactus automatically as it grows, causing the farm to work.

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4) Plant cactus

The torches are optional, as cactus doesn't require light to grow (Image via Mojang)

At this point, there are only two small things left to do before the cactus farm is operational.

You'll want to go through and plant a cactus on each of the sand blocks you previously placed. Then, add a torch on top of each fencepost. This will help make sure that the area is bright enough to not spawn any hostile Minecraft mobs, which could drop items that clog up the farm's storage system.