Farming Simulator 25 Production Chains: Profit, Investment and Payback

Build a Large Tarp Greenhouse first. It costs 36,000, grows lettuce from nothing but water and earns about 7,200 a month on Normal, so it pays for itself in 5 in-game months. Greenhouses top the table because the water they use costs you nothing.

Next, turn greenhouse vegetables into kimchi. Greenhouses growing chili peppers, spring onion, garlic and napa cabbage feed a Preserved Food Factory (small); the whole set costs 180,000, earns about 13,200 a month and pays for itself in 14 months.

If you have woodland, the Sawmill (Wood-Mizer LT15) is the fastest factory that runs on your own goods. It costs 150,000, turns wood into wood beams and earns about 7,900 a month, so it pays for itself in 19 months. The biggest monthly earner is cake: its chain earns about 23,300 a month, but it needs 6 buildings and 1,134,000 up front, so it takes 49 months to pay back.

How the Numbers Work

Profit is what a building adds on top of selling its raw goods yourself, after its running costs and upkeep. The Grain Mill (large), for example, turns 18,000 L of sorghum a month into flour and earns you 5,400 a month more than selling the sorghum would. Prices are averaged over the year on Normal difficulty in game version 1.25. Factories produce the same amount per in-game month whatever you set the days per month to, so the payback times hold on any setting.

Investment is the shop price of every building in the chain. Where a chain needs another factory’s product, it includes enough of the best supplier building to keep the last building running at full speed, and any surplus from the suppliers gets sold. The goods you put in come from your own fields, animals and woodland, so the animals and land aren’t counted.

Building prices and running costs are the same on every difficulty, but sale prices aren’t, so difficulty changes payback a lot. The Sawmill (Wood-Mizer LT15) pays for itself in 11 months on Easy and 34 months on Hard.

Best Chains for Your Money

The table runs from the fastest payback to the slowest. Buildings names the building that makes the product, followed by the recipe when the building has several, then the suppliers it needs. Goods in per month is what you deliver from your farm to keep every building in the chain running. Where the shop sells two buildings with the same name, (small) marks the cheaper one and (large) the more expensive one.

Chains That Lose Money

The Greenhouse For Rice Saplings costs more to run than its rice saplings are worth, about 32 a month. Build it anyway if you want to grow rice: rice is planted from saplings, and the shop doesn’t sell them.

Before You Build

Running two recipes at once works differently depending on the building. The Bakery, Biogas Plant, Canning Factory, Grain Mill, Preserved Food Factory, Sawmill and Sugar Mill run every recipe you switch on at full speed side by side, so feeding a second recipe adds its full profit. Greenhouses and the Carpentry, Cement Factory, Cereal Factory, Cooper, Dairy, Grape Processing Unit, Oil Mill, Paper Factory, Potato Processing Plant, Rope Maker, Soup Factory, Spinnery and Tailor Shop split their capacity between the recipes you switch on: two recipes each make half as much.

Switch off any recipe you can’t keep supplied. Each one charges its running cost the whole time it’s switched on, even while it sits waiting for goods.

Fill greenhouses from a pond or river with a water trailer. That water is free, which is what makes greenhouses pay back so fast.

Take finished pallets to a train station. Its pallet drop-off adds 15% to what the product sells for.

A Biogas Plant also fills its storage with digestate. Nobody buys it, but it counts as a slurry pass on your fields, so it saves you buying fertilizer.

For what each crop earns in the field, see the crop guide.