Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 5 (Facebook) – Crop / Tree Profits Calculated
Crop and Tree Profits Calculated
I’ve received some questions and comments that have made me feel as if I am not explaining the calculations I use to determine the profits of crops and trees in Farm Town properly. First off, as some of you may already be aware, I offer a spreadsheet for sale that calculates a lot of the information I talk about regarding Farm Town in my blog posts. If you are interested in learning more, a description is available here: http://male.themodernhippy.com/games/farm-town-spreadsheet-v20-excel/. This spreadsheet is not protected and does not have any of the formulas hidden. This means that you can clearly see the math behind my calculations, and edit them to your liking. You can even take it a step further and perform your own calculations by making additions to the spreadsheet. At any rate, I use this spreadsheet to determine the profits that are obtainable via each specific crop and tree on an hourly basis.
The Farm Town Spreadsheets Calculations
We’ll begin with Crops. The calculations are really quite simple. At the beginning, I determine the actual cost to plant the crop. The actual cost to plant a crop in Farm Town is the crop’s price, plus the cost to plow the field (20 coins). So, lets work with the Potato crop as an example. The crop itself is 40 coins, adding the cost to plow of 20 coins, leaves us with a total cost of 60 to plant 1 crop of Potatoes. Now we need to know the amount of money we’ll get from selling our harvest. In Farm Town, you get more money for allowing others to harvest your crops and trees. For this reason, I use what is referred to as the ‘hired harvest’ sale price for determining profits. The amount of money Tom, the Farm Town marketplace sales dude, will give you 119 coins for selling 1 crop of Potatoes that were harvested by another person. Now, take profit from selling the crop (119) and subtract the cost of (60) and you will come up with a result of 59 coins. This number represents your total profit from purchasing the crop. However, in order to compare this crop to all the others you need to divide the profit by the harvest time. Because grapes are 4 hour crops, you cannot use the days number to calculate this crop easily. And, one day in Farm Town is 20 hours, which means crops with a 1 day harvest time take 20 hours, 2 day harvest time take 40… and so on. So now we dividing the profit (59) by the harvest time in hours (20) and arrive at our Profit / Hour for Potatoes of 2.95. This represents the number of coins that you will earn per hour with planting 1 crop of Potatoes. Now you have a good number to work with to compare all of the crops to one another.
Trees
The method in calculating the profit per hour for trees in Farm Town is a little different, and even easier than that of crops. For trees that you do not purchase yourself (received as gifts from Farm Town friends) all you need to do is take the hired harvest sale price and divide it by the harvest time in hours. If we take the Coconut tree (best income) we have a hired harvest sale price of 101 coins and a harvest time of 5 days (100 hours). Performing the calculation shows us that 1.01 is the income per hour from owning a coconut tree. If you decide to purchase a tree (not the best idea) the calculation would be different yet again. Because you do not purchase a tree each time you harvest it as you do with crops, the price only has to be deducted once. What I do is divide the cost by the hired harvest payout to determine the number of harvest cycles that will have to take place before I recoup my initial investment. After that, the income is pure profit and can be calculated using the formula above. For example, Apple trees cost 400 coins and have a hired harvest sale price of 46 coins. Dividing the cost (400) by the income (46) shows us that it will take 8.70 (rounded) cycles to earn back our 400 coin investment. At which time, the trees income per hour will be 0.77 coins.
What does this mean and how can it help me?
This means I just outlined how to determine the best values for all of the crops and trees in Farm Town. All you need to do is perform these calculations for each crop and tree and you will be in the know. Don’t want to do that, that’s ok. I already have.. my spreadsheet contains all of the calculations already done. Not interested? Well, if I gave all of the information away, no one would want to buy the spreadsheet. However, I’m not going to leave you empty handed. As mentioned before…
BEST INVESTMENTS
Crops:
Grapes
Trees:
Coconut Tree
Although Grapes are tedious to plow, plant and then harvest every 4 hours, they are by far the best money earning crop available. And on that note, they are the best XP earning crop as well. However, I mentioned this fact already in an earlier post… and I can’t leave you without some updated information.
The next best crop for those of you not able / willing to be on every 4 hours for Grapes, is Onions.
But, Grapes only sell for 67 coins, and Pumpkins sell for 475.. you must be wrong.
Sorry Mr. Negative pants… make sure to keep in mind that just because 1 crop sells for more than another doesn’t take into account all of the necessary information. If a crop takes 5 days (100 hours) to harvest then that block of your farm will be busy for that length of time and unusable for another crop. So if you have a crop that takes 4 hours, such as Grapes, you could then plant 25 crops of Grapes in the same amount of time it takes for 1 instance of Pumpkins to be ready for harvest. Doing the math tells you that the number of Grapes that can be planted (25) multiplied by the income for harvesting each plot (67) leaves us with a total of 1,675 coins in the same amount of time you would have earned 475 coins had you planted Pumpkins. Using the profit rather than the sales price for both of these crops shows a better comparison. Pumpkins earn a profit of 255 coins after the costs to plant 1 crop are deducted. Grapes equal 675 coins profit after deducting their planting costs for 25 crops. This is still a dramatic difference!
I hope this information reaches you all well, and happy Farming!
In my next Farm Town post I hope to cover the specifics of maximizing your income with limited funds, or if you have a limited space to work with (small farm). I also hope to identify some other areas that I may have missed talking about in order to help keep all of my readers informed.
Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of this post. Also, feel free to ask any questions, or tell me what you would like me to talk about on my next post!
View my other Farm Town posts.
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May 30th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Forestry Magazine…
[...] Crop and Tree Profits Calculated I’ve received some questions and comments that have made me feel as if I am not explaining the calculations I use to determine. … This represents the number of coins that you will earn per hour with planting 1 …
June 4th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
[...] Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 5 (Facebook) – Crop / Tree Profits Calculated for updated information. NOTE: my information is incomplete. I do not have non-self harvest income [...]
June 7th, 2009 at 2:30 am
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June 10th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Is the 20 coin price of plowing the fields a part of your calculation?
June 10th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
@meia
Yep. I factor that into the cost of each seed before I go any further with my calculations. In that way, the cost of each seed is effectively 20 coins more, which gives a more accurate ending calculation. If you have any other Farm Town related questions, let me know.
Rick
June 10th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Are you sure about Onions being next best crop? according to my calculations, Cabbage earns 42 coins per day, followed by Potatoes at 39, Watermelons at 37, then Onions and Peas at 36. My formula is listed below
(sell price/days to harvest)/(plow cost+seed cost/days to harvest)=profit per day
(this is using the Farmtown day of 20 hours)
On the other hand, I totally agree with your calculations on Grapes. they have the potential to gain up to 160 coins per plot per day.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:02 am
@Poeticserenity
Hello,
I had a little difficulty following your formula. Effectively, by performing (sell price/days to harvest) you are determining the income per day (this is not to be confused with the profit per day). Then, by doing (plow cost+seed cost/days to harvest) you are determining the total cost to plant the crop (plow cost+seed cost) and dividing it by the days to harvest to find the total cost per day. So, your final equation would be income per day/cost per day for a particular crop… this gives an odd result. Although, it makes me think that you are trying to calculate the profit margin of each crop. If you did (income per day-cost per day… subtraction rather than division) you would end up with the profit per day. The profit per day could then be used to determine which crop will earn the most money per day.
I would also like to make sure you are calculating your days to harvest properly. You can use .20 for grapes as that is the percentage of a farm town day (20 hours) that it takes for Grapes to become ready for harvest (4). Then, each full number used to represent the days in a harvest would represent 20 hours of real time, or one Farm Town day. Alternatively, you could (this is what I do) use hours rather than days, and calculate everything hourly (Grapes:4, Cabbage:20,Onions:60).
The only time that I can identify when it is not beneficial to purchase Onions is when you have a limited amount of money on hand. Remember however, as a rule, Grapes are THE BEST crop in the game for earning money and XP. There is no way around that. However, let’s say that we are new to Farm Town and have only 1000 coins to work with. Coming in second to Grapes is not Onions, Sunflowers, or even Cabbage, it is Strawberries. That’s right, if you have 1000 coins to spend, Strawberries will earn you the most profit. This is because we have limited funds, 1000 coins to be exact. Now you have to look at the amount of crops you can plant along with their profitability rather then their profitability exclusively. Because Strawberries are so inexpensive we can purchase 20 crops of them as opposed to 5 crops of the more expensive Onions. Comparing those two we see that hourly we would earn 52 coins profit from having 20 crops of Strawberries, and only 18 coins profit if we had chosen to plant the 5 crops of Onions instead. This is also the case because we lack the money to plant our entire farm full of crops. If we did have enough money to plant our entire Farm Town farm full of crops, our only limitation would then be the size of our farms. As I recall, the starting farm is 12×12 squares in size. This means there is a total of 144 spaces that can be used to plant crops. With this being the limitation, Onions (coming in second to Grapes of course) would earn us 518 coins profit per hour, whereas Cabbage would bring in 454 coins profit per hour.
SUMMARY: Best crop, always, for money and XP is Grapes. If you don’t want to plant, plow and harvest every 4 hours (Grapes), and you have enough money to plant your entire Farm Town farm full of whatever crop you like, the next best crop for earning money is Onions. If you do have limited funds, the best crop for earning money (excluding grapes of course) is Strawberries.
Wow, that took 4 hours and numerous revisions of my spreadsheet to confirm.
I hope this helps.. and if it raises more questions, feel free to ask. Also, if you posted your equation incorrectly, let me know what it really is. And, if you would like me to show you some of my equations just let me know.
Thank you,
Rick
June 16th, 2009 at 6:23 am
Someone else may have mentioned this already, but you aren’t taking into account the TIME it takes to plow and plant a 24X24 field of grapes. This takes me AT LEAST an hour effectively pushing the harvest time for grapes up. Plus, assuming you sleep for eight hours and do things for a living, how the heck could you harvest/plow/plant a 24X24 field every four hours!
June 17th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
@thanks
That’s correct. I was looking purely at the numbers intentionally. Because people take different amounts of time to plow, harvest, and replant.. I was not able to properly factor this variable into the equation. And, rather then present the myriad of different possibilities of planting cycles that would accommodate each individuals availability and speed with the game, I chose to present the numbers and allow users to decide for themselves. Also, not everyone owns a 24×24 farm. A smaller farm would be more suitable to Grapes for ease of use. However, you also have the option of diversifying your crops within your farm. Planting the majority of your farm with a high profit crop like Onions which take 3 days to harvest, and then a smaller portion with grapes would still allow you the enjoyment of logging in regularly to harvest and replant, but not the annoyance of having to do an enormous farm.
Taking it a step further, if you are only able to get 2 crops of grapes planted and harvested within a day, it is more profitable to plant Onions instead. This would also assume that your fields would be left empty after harvesting your second crop of grapes, which would be silly. A cycle to consider in this scenario might be to plant a crop of grapes and then follow up with a high paying 1 day crop. If it takes you an hour to harvest and replant, this process should take 26 hours to complete once. Doing this a few times would push your harvest times back at which time you would need to skip a crop and replant at a more convenient time.
I would also like to point out, however, that Grapes still remain the absolute best way in which to get XP while still making a profit. While it may be MORE profitable to plant and harvest Onions, you would only earn 3 XP per plot over the 60 hour time frame. With Grapes (taking into account your 2 hour harvest time, and waking up all hours of the night) you could plant 10 plots of Grapes giving you 30 XP in the same time period, per plot. Being more realistic, even 2 plantings of Grapes per day would bring in 18 XP.
Rick
June 20th, 2009 at 11:10 am
OKAY!!! Fineally, I have someone that agreees with me about onions. Ive been power farming for almost three weeks now planting and harvesting onions. NO ONE believes me that onions are the next best thing to earning power when you don’t want to wake up every four hours to harvest grapes. THANK YOU THANK YOU. Friend me and you can harvest 900 fields of onions every three days!!!
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
Some really good advice, exept for 1 thing…every time I harvest my crops I don’t get the amount of coins Farm Town says they are worth. For instance, it says sunflowers get 277 coins when harvested but I am only credited 249 coins. I have contacted Farm Town about this a few times, but never get a response.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Thanks for taking the time to figure out which crops are most profitable both XP and coins. I haven’t planted grapes a lot because they went bad since I share this pc with hubby. But I’m thinking that if I did grapes after I woke up, on the days that he’s working, then I’d be able to have them harvested before he came home and wanted the pc LOL
I’m not up to onions yet; I need to visit more FB neighbors’ farms now (oh the email address is a munger, but it’ll take you to my profile in FB if you enter it there — if you do send a FB friend request, mention Farm Town so I’ll know which list to put you in).
Thanks,
Sherri/Shreela
July 16th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Time is money!!!
Virtually, grape wins.
But in reality, you loose!
ALL IS RELATIVE, take your pick.
Have fun.
July 21st, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Thank you so much for settling an argument I was having over the “grapes are best, idiot” topic with someone. You are as talented with words are you are with a plow, good sir. Please marry me and let’s have lots of smart babies with attractive musculature and keen business sense.
July 21st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
@Banjo Bobby
As attractive of an offer as that is, I’m taken. Though I cannot doubt our offspring would likely have attractive musculature and the business sense to trump Donald.
September 19th, 2009 at 9:03 am
I had my name in Bold & red at once, I went to change my avatar and now I can’t get my name bold & red.
I typed the letters below the first time and now it won’t let me do it.
Joyce
November 28th, 2009 at 11:24 am
I’m so glad to know that someone else out there is making spreadsheets. I use mine to tell me the most profitable crop to plant given 1) my current number of coins 2) the empty space available to plow and 3) the amount of time I can be on farmtown. Almost every kind of crop will come out on top for some combination of variables. Here’s one scenario:
1) 20,000 coins
2) 250 open fields (to be plowed by a hired person)
3) won’t be on farmtown again till tomorrow
Sage, eggplant, cabbage, and potatoes (in that order) will be the most profitable in this scenario, so based on your level you should choose one of those. Onions are more profitable per field, but I could put in only 108 fields of it.
The only crop that (from my calculations) is NEVER a good idea is coffee. It is always subsumed by sunflowers. Since you can plant sunflowers at an earlier level than coffee, I can see no (rational) reason that one would plant coffee. I have planted it for irrational reasons, though. I like coffee!
Also, if you look at orange trees as a long-term investment, they are quite profitable. (It just takes some time to recoup your initial investment.) Remember, in the amount of space that you can put just one field, you can fit 9 orange trees. Orange trees are the most profitable 3-day crop per time*area. The only thing that beats them per time*area are basil, beets, squash, grapes, and raspberries. (And all of those crops require that you can be online more than once per day.)
December 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I use the exact same method to determine the best cost effective crop to plant. Try doing your calculations with beets. This is all I farm until bedtime. My calculations earn me 18 per 4 hour harvest…2 more than grapes.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
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September 23rd, 2010 at 11:44 am
I can’t realy see it, but when i get the money, i’ll buy it and maybe i’ll understand it and i’ll like your system.