Non-Ancient-Fruit Monocroppers Represent

Why ethical? I know it will deplete the soil for nutrients and such making the soil quality poor, but that's not really a moral thing just a bad farming/gardening style.

 

It's manageable. You just build some Junimo huts and those cute little balls of colour fertilize your soil the 'natural' way. You'd be surprised how much fertilizer one Junimo can produce in one year. What do they eat you ask? Well let me ask you another question: did you ever see a wolf ingame before or after you lost an animal over night?

 

And the all-too-familiar sound of "cha-ching!"

 

Monocultures make plants more susceptible to viruses because most monocultures rely on plants that are "cloned" (for lack of better word) from their ancestors, so they never develop resistances or immunities to diseases (we've been using the same potatoes for decades). This requires farmers to use increasingly more dangerous/toxic fertilizers and pesticides to keep up with constantly-evolving diseases and pests, which has negative environmental effects and is obviously not going to be a great thing for humans to consume. It's an ethical issue for me because I'm pretty concerned about the environment as it is, and that kind of problem only exacerbates my worries. (Not that I take it this seriously in the game - it's just that monocropping is negative in my mind that I never thought to try it in game until I saw this thread).

 

Guys help, I started a blueberry farm and now I've produced over 300 blueberry wines and jellies. I can't escape them. They keep growing.

 

Sorry, we can't hear your screams over the delightful popping sound of all the blueberries being picked. lol

 

He died as he lived, buried in blueberries.

 

Day 54.

The blueberries have taken over the farm. They've expanded to nearly every crevice. I can no longer see the sun. My entire farm is buried in blueberries. They've polluted the river. All the fish are blueberries. I must pick them for nourishment. More take their place every time I pick them. I haven't seen my family for four weeks. I fear I might be consumed by them soon. Someone, help me...

 

-Smells the air- Does anyone else enjoy the overwhelming take over of blueberries? The sound is amazing, the scent, the taste. I think it's safe to say, they're here to stay.

 

I find it amusing that so many people plant so many blueberries when they haven't been particularly profitable since the 1.1 update.

Spring: Strawberries! Strawberry fields forever...
Summer: Starfruit!
Fall: Sucks! No, really... it's the least profitable planting season of the year, which is a real disappointment. Yes, I'm still salty about a patch put in about a year ago. Cranberries are, sadly, about as good as you are going to get. Which is a shame.
Winter: Nothing grows

Greenhouse: is not quite a monoculture. Trees are stupidly profitable, with peach and pomegranate yielding roughly twice the monthly profit as ancient fruit, so maximizing your trees really boosts your income. Likewise, hops are more profitable than ancient fruit, however they do have to be harvested daily, which can be annoying to some. Ancient Fruit is relegated to a 'filler crop' used to fill in the spaces I walk through between the trees and trellis that abound in my greenhouse.

 

True but they're profitable enough and the sound and color to boot means they're my fave.

The fall things was taking this game as far away from HM/SoS as possible in my opinion. Fall has been profitable for so long it's weird to play a farming game it suddenly is nerfed so much.

 

I don't really care about most profitable. All of them are at least somewhat profitable, so I just plant what I like.

 

I don't care about profit either. I plant a bit of nearly everything, especially the fruits and vegetables I like.

 

They are still profitable, just not extremely profitable. CA said it was an error to make berries so powerful but the community loved to profit off of them so he didn't completely nerf them. My guess is he probably was thinking each harvest would be x amount of gold, not each berry.

Remember, not everyone plants just for income. Keep in mind there's recipes, community center bundles, artisan goods, and gifting as well, along with just personal enjoyment from the variety of crops. Heck, I even plant sunflowers which you lose money from growing for the oil and gifts.

 

Personally, I spend too much time in Skull Cave to even set up a crop, most of the time. I usually wind up planting something like berries or melons, since it's easy to just plant them and forget about them if you have a good sprinkler setup. The only real exception to this is cauliflower, which makes for an excellent curative while underground. It heals a decent amount, restores a lot of energy, and it's fairly cheap to set up even in the early game, so it's not tough to stockpile. I'd probably plant them in my greenhouse, if I could ever bother to get it opened...

 

Since you mention sunflowers - I bought a few seeds in year one and I haven't had to actually purchase seeds since, and I'm now in year 4. lol Because you get more seeds when you pick the flowers you can pretty much just recycle them over and over. I think that balances out the negative profit margin.

 

My HarvestWithScythe mod gave me hundreds of seeds from it from a glitch, so I recycled all but 8 for next year, lol. Felt cheaty taking advantage of a glitch.

 

Recipes mostly are traps, community center bundles are already completed after the first year, artisan goods ARE your crops, generally wine of some sort, and I find gifting to be much more easily simplified by just having a barn full of cows and a coop full of chickens. The entire town at least likes either one or the other, and the cheese is an excellent food. Unless you are going courting, in which case you forage iridium-star coconuts for Hailey (because you DID get the auto-iridium star quality forage perk, right?), battery packs for Maru, and the appropriate gems for the other three (amethyst for Abigail, emeralds for Penny, and turquoise for Emily).

For cave diving, particularly skull cave dives, gold-star cheese from large milk is one of the best foods, and you get up to twelve per day from your cows for the cost of making sure you have a vibrant lawn.

 

Achievement hunters like to cook for completionism, and you can get exclusive boosts from recipes. Also, certain villagers LOVE certain crops which is why I grow many crops for villagers. I'd rather gift Maru a strawberry than a more valuable battery pack, likewise I'd rather gift Caroline a Spangle than a Fish Taco.

And no, I did not choose the iridium quality perk, lol.

I also forgot to point out it's a good idea to keep a couple of each crop and not sell them because you may get a quest for a crop.

 

'Recipes mostly are t̶r̶a̶p̶s̶' fun!

I cook because it is fun to cook. Because making someone their favorite meal on their birthday is the appropriate thing you'd want to do if they were a real-life friend. Because a nice hot bowl of soup or a root-veggie platter fits the mood of a rainy, gloomy day. Because I love hauling a fresh veggie in from my garden and making a recipe with it right then and there.

CA has said before that he deliberately made the cooking function non-profitable. But that does not mean I do not derive immense personal profit from it.