Minecraft wiki entry for Villager, associated text: Villagers have eight hidden inventory slots, which start empty whenever the villager is spawned. Villagers do not intentionally seek out items to pick up, but they do collect any bread, carrots, potatoes, wheat, wheat seeds, beetroot, beetroot seeds, and bone meal within range (bone meal can be picked up only by farmer villagers). These are the only items they can pick up, although the player may use the /item replace command to put an arbitrary item into a villager's inventory. If a player and a villager are in the pickup range of an item at the same time, the player always picks it up first. If several villagers are next to an item, the same one picks up the item every time. Consequently, in constrained space, the same villager picks up any item dropped. This behavior prevents villagers from sharing food in a one-block space.