Sugarcane Farm working for 1.11 snapshots (16w44a)
Just when I thought the recent snapshot only made things worse for sugarcane farms I pretty much discovered that my latest harvesting mechanism actually also works with two sets of pistons, giving you the ability to harvest twice the amount of canes with the same amount of "tech blocks". The simple fact that observers also emit pulses if moved by pistons is a godsend for this farm design, since this makes powering the two pistons vertically quite easy.
Like all stackable designs, this farm is around 99% efficient. You miss out on this 1% getting stuck on the edges, but don't have to use any rail systems to collect drops and also have way better stackibility compared to other designs. No matter how many floors you add, you'll never need to change anything at all for drop collection, making this a pretty affordable farm in the long run. The farm is all about simplicity and getting as many canes as possible without wasting any game ticks, giving each individual cane as many ticks for growing as possible to maximize the potential loot.