MCRetro

While being unnecessarily experimental, I found that it may be more efficient to use mushrooms in place of torches when clearing out deserts (or perhaps gravel while strip mining). See, when you place a block adjacent to a mushroom under light, the mushroom pops out of the ground, and you can pick it back up. That means if you have a row of stacked sand, you can place a mushroom under each column from one end to the other to remove the sand, and the mushrooms will pluck themselves!

Using this method, you won't have a mess of torches to clean up (though you will have to recollect mushrooms at differing elevations). I'm very curious to know if anyone else has tried this as well, and if you haven't, I hope this is helpful to you!

this post really feels like back in the day on minecraftforum when the game was new and people were still figuring out the mechanics haha

can't say i always have a stack of mushrooms on me at the ready, but a neat trick regardless

you don't? lots of people do (at least in beta 1.7.3). the main conversation comes down to if it is better to use bread or mushroom stew as a main food source as both can be kept in stacked un-crafted form in ones inventory, but because of this I often see people carrying two slots for mushrooms on them at all times