Mod Name: Advanced Agriculture
Alright since i dont see a 'modern' mod that adds in the more advance concepts of Agriculture, I'd figure I throw this one I have been having jostled around my brain for a while.
Do you ever wonder how long it takes for crops to grow in minecraft? 37 minutes? Don't you wish you had some way of making them faster without using up so much bonemeal or fertilizer? Don't you want them to yield more than they currently do? Do you want orchard trees that are conventiently small and don't require you to climb a stool? Are you stranded on some island in the sky without dirt but have tons of gravel, sand, and obisidian or stuck in a drought?
Well here is a few basic concepts that the idea behind this mod introduces.
Hydroponics Using water and tubes, along with a couple tubs, you can create an efficient system where you can yield more crops and control the growth of your crops using very little resources yet usage of a lot of water. You could also introduce an Aggregate medium in the tubes/rails that hooked up to your system such as gravel which is a good dirt substitute, sand which unfortunately is one time use, and obsidian which helps your crops yield double the amount, or if you have wool or rockwool you don't know what do with. The best part about this type of system is the fact that one bone meal can help increase the growth of a 3x3 section of your Hydrophonic system. Example, you have 9x9 system of tubes, it would only 9 bonemeal/fertilizer to up the growth of your crops that would normally take 81 piece of bonemeal.
Aeroponics Like Hydroponics, this uses water with the exception that it doesnt use tubes, instead you have rails/trays that allow for a more space efficient system that turns 1 block space into 3x3 farm space via GUI. Sadly you cannot use aggregates but fortunately, this system yields more seeds for something such as Bioreactor, then definitely look to this type of system because when a seed is place in a tray/rail, it will propogate to the empty slots and to other rails/trays adjacent. Another drawback yet upside is the fact that the Aeroponics system requires Formula, essentially liquid fertilizer made from various things, that is made in the Formulalizer that just requires water as solution base, power to mix the solution and the nutrients which are things such as Bonemeal, Rotten flesh, Iron Dust, Nickel dust, and copper dust that also can be used in a hydroponic system
Cloning Well not cloning in the sense that you will be replicating yourself but rather specific seeds AND saplings in special trays. Inserting a seed or sapling into an Aeroponic tray/rail will cause it to be cloned/duplicated, while seeds will grow normally, saplings wont grow until you plant them into the suitable medium. this is excellent if you have specific strands of Tree or sapling that is rather hard to come by, even the elusive silverwood sapling and the greatwood but I warn you, sapling cloning does take a while.
Dwarfing No, you are not getting turned into Honeydew, Dwarfing is where you take a sapling and plant in smaller space than it is accustomed to via grafting and what not through the usage of special brick pots. Orchard Trees when dwarfed will have their fruits grow twice as fast, namely trees from Pam's harvest craft but some might find it useful to have a mini silverwood to carry around. Dwarf Trees can be transplanted from their pots into the wilderness or your garden, along with conveniently relocating the pot to another spot.
Grow-lights Tired of dealing with lamps of growth? Well look no more because now you can make Grow-lights that easy to make but require a bit of power to run in order for your crops to grow even faster. These Growlights when placed above and in proximity of a plant will increase its rate of growth, regardless if it is growing the old fashioned way or in your Advanced farming systems. I hope you have a stable solar power system because if you are running entire rows of these, better have a reactor...
Greenhouses Now at this point you are thinking, where the heck am i going to put all of this stuff when I run out of space, a Greenhouse thats where. A greenhouse is a hollow multiblock structure that again enables faster growth of plants, including ones in your hydrophonic and aeroponic systems, they can be as small as a 3x3 space or as large as you need them to be. Fair warning though, if you don't make vents, the greenhouse gases may get trapped then turn the atmosphere in your greenhouse deadly to you. Now if one was clever enough, they could possible use the gas vented to generate power via some sort of turbine...
Now that there is another drawback to the farming systems, you wouldn't be able to grow melons or Pumpkins unless someone IRL has done that before to make mini melons or mini pumpkins.
i would love to see this out there in the modpacks and have this Mod be compatible with Thermal expansion, Big Reactors, Thaumcraft, Forestry, Pam's Harvestcraft, and Minefactory reloaded since Plastic is something that I want to see heavily used for crafting stuff in this mod.