FarmVille Crops Guide

FarmVille from Zynga is rapidly turning into a cultural phenomenon, rising to the top of the already hugely popular social gaming world. Just recently the number of Facebook users passed 300 million, and it seems all of them have become addicted to hoeing and decorating their own little piece of FarmVille.

At the core of the FarmVille experience is planting and harvesting crops. They are at once an excellent source of income as well as valued experience points. This article lists all the available crops in the game, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each crop. There is also a section with recommendations on what crops to plant together to get the best possible effects. By using this guide to FarmVille crops, you should have no problem setting up a hugely profitable farm and leveling up very quickly.

The following is a list of crops ordered by how much profit you will make pr hour. The crop yield is calculated by subtracting the seed cost and the cost of plowing the field from the sales price, and dividing the result by the hours it takes for the crops to ripe. This yields the profit per hour.

Peas
Peas sell for 381 coins after just 1 day of growing, this makes peas the very best crop in FarmVille for farmers looking to make a lot of money. If you harvest the peas immediately after they are ripe, you will make 7.65 coins per crop per hour.

Asparagus
The shorter growing time of the asparagus may make it seem like it would be the best crop to grow, but the shorter turn around also means the plowing costs become more significant. Still, asparagus runs a close second to peas at 7.62 coins per hour.

Onion
Onions need just 12 hours before they can be harvested, this makes the harvesting of onions easy to schedule and may make it a crop many might have success growing. At a still impressive 7,5 coins per hour, the predictable schedule of the onions could make a huge difference for your farm. Onions sell for 275 coins.

Grapes
Grapes takes excactly the same time to ripe as peas, but pay significantly less. Still the cheap seed price and the fact that it's available early in the game makes this a great crop for a low level farm. At 7.39 coins per hour it is still a great return on your investment. Especially the relatively cheap seed cost of 85 coins makes this crop perfect for start up farms.

Sugar Cane
For impatient farmers, the plowing cost eats up a lot of the profits of your crops, but if you don't like waiting around en entire day for your peas to grow, the sugar cane is the most profitable of the fast growing crops. They are ready to harvest in 8 hours, sells for 239 coins and makes you 3.37 coins per hour.

Tomatoes
While growing tomatoes might seem prudent on a farm, the profits of tomato farming are not stellar. With a short growing time of 8 hours, and a cheaper seed price than the sugar canes, the profit of 7.25 coins per hour could mean that for some farmers, tomatoes is a good stacking crop if they want to run a stacked crops farm.

Sunflowers
Sunflowers are only interesting until you open up the pea seeds, the seeds are expensive, and with a growing time identical to peas, you are looking at 7.17 coins per hour. In every way peas will be a better option if they are available.

Coffee
Coffee gets to honors of being the first crop to make less than 7 coins per hour. The awkward growing times makes growing coffee sort of pointless, there are better alternatives both for money, experience and scheduling purposes. Coffee seeds cost 120 coins and sells for 243 coins, yielding a profit per hour of 6.75 coins.

Black Berries
Many farmers look at the short turn around time for berries as a great way to build up money fast. While there are benefits to fast growing crops such as less waiting around and more experience points, the fixed price of plowing your field at 15 coins becomes a huge drain when you plow your field every 4 hours. Blackberries is not the worst example of this, but still, even with a good profit margin on the seeds, the high plowing costs reduced the payout for blackberries to 6.75 coins per hour.

Blueberries
Blueberries are the poor mans black berries, both cheaper and available earlier than black berries, the total profits of blueberries are close enough to black berries to not make a huge difference. As a blueberry farmer you will make 6.5 coins per hour per crop.

Carrots
Carrots have nothing going for them, the price, profit and grow time does not line up to give this crop a benefit over any crop in the game. There should never be a reason to plant carrots, they are usurped by onions in every way. At 6.25 per hour in profits, there are many crops that perform worse, but carrots have no advantage in any area over the higher paying crops.

Broccoli
The high profit margin and sell price of this crop might make it seem like a good investment, but the long growing times pulls down your hourly wage with this crop. Even though it sells for a tempting 473 coins, the 2 day grow time leaves your profits at 5.60 coins per hour. Over 2 coins per hour less than peas. Still, this is the best performing of the very slow growing crops, and if you need to schedule your farm sessions far apart, this crop might be the one you want.

Raspberries
For the hyperactive farmers, a grow time of 2 hours could be the selling point for this crop. If you stack your berry patches, you could set up a schedule for yourself where you need to harvest and plow every 15 minutes, successfully turning your entire day into one long FarmVille raspberry session. Raspberries won't give you any experience points for harvesting though, and the profit is a not too impressive 5.5 coins per hour.

Cabbage
Cabbage is another crop that should only be considered for farmers who don't want to work on their farm too often. It takes two days to grow, and the profit is 5.06 coins per hour. Basically, this crop only functions as a broccoli substitute until that crop becomes available.

Red Wheat
Red wheat takes a full 3 days to grow, this is killing the profit margins on this crop. If you absolutely can't be bothered to farm more than once every three days, you might find red wheat useful, but for any farmer with a little more time on their hands, the profit per hour of 3.68 makes this crop hard to take seriously.

Peppers
Another crop that should never be planted on your farm. It yields 3.34 coins per hour and is not worth it in any scenario. Find better alternatives.

Yellow Melon
If you love planting melons, unfortunately you will not make any more money than you would from planting peppers. Planting yellow melons would be similar to making the unforgivable mistake of planting peppers 4 times in a row. These melons sell for 528 coins, but the profit per hour is still only 3.34 coins per hour.

Aloe Vera
The name is the only thing this crop has going for it, 3.33 coins per hours should be enough to make you opt out of planting his crop.

Corn
In real life, corn is one of the most important crops, in FarmVille it's a waste. For 3.11 coins an hour this crop is not worth it.

Rice
If you are big on making an even amount of coins per hour, then rice will deliver with a per hour profit of exactly 3 coins. 3 coins per hour is a terrible yield though, so give this crop a pass.

Pumpkin
Around Halloween times, there will undoubtedly be a score of farmers growing pumpkins and starting their own pumpkin patches, you'll get a scare when you see the ghoulish profit margins on pumpkins though. At just 2.87 coins per hour, it's enough to make you scream.

Pineapples
Stay away. 2.86 coins per hour is virtually like working for free.

Potatoes
It's not getting any better. Wait for three days for your potato crops to be ready for harvest, and pocket an insulting 2.82 coins per hour. Absolutely no reason to consider this crop.

Strawberries
Many people have a sweet spot for strawberries, but the return for a strawberry farmer is absolutely dreadful. 2.5 coins per hour is anything but sweet. The only farmers who might have a benefit of this crop are farmers who are extremely strapped for cash. Even if the profits per crop are dismal, the super cheap price for the seeds might make it possible for broke farmers to plant a large field.

Bell Peppers
2.34 coins per hour, enough said.

Watermelon
Another useless crop, super long grow times and a weak sales price leaves the unfortunate watermelon farmer with just 2.20 coins per hour for their efforts.

Cotton
Cotton gets the distinction of being the first crop on the list to net under 2 coins per hour. At 1.69 coins per hour, planting cotton is virtually like throwing away coins.

Squash
A terrible crop, just like it is a terrible vegetable. If you want to plow a n entire field and sow it with squash for a profit of 1.43 coins per hour, it's likely you won't enjoy FarmVille very much.

Soybeans
Soybeans make you exactly the same as squash, except you get to harvest your useless crops once a day instead of every other day.

Artichokes
Again, a crop with a funny name, but with a terrible return. Unfortunately, some farmers might be attracted by the low seed price. They will likely arti-choke on the 1.29 coins per hour profit.

Eggplant
Barely over a coin per hour in profits for this crop, and probably never planted by anyone when you see the terrible earnings on this crop. At 1.04 coins per hour, still it is unbelievably not the worst crop in the game.

Wheat
Zynga put this crop in the game only so people can go to other peoples farms and make fun of them if they plant wheat. Wheat farmers make 0.94 coins per hour. Do not plant wheat.