Minecraft wiki entry for Tips_and_tricks, associated text: Even basic farms will rapidly produce a lot of food, to the point of oversupply. Once you've got a chestful of cooked meat, you're pretty much set -- only a few exotic foods can even compete. In general, it's worth saving some extra oversupply -- remember, chests are cheap. However, at some point it will be time to just stop slaughtering animals or harvesting crops at a given farm until you actually need more to cut off the oversupply. Automatic farms can be turned off, or excess crops routed to an auto-composter to make bone meal. In multiplayer, one player with a farm can support others if he/she has enough food. Crops can often be fed to animals, and crops and meat can both be sold to villagers to get emeralds(see the Trading Hall tutorial). Note that food is generally sold to villagers uncooked, so don't cook everything up front unless you will eat it in the future.