I have several automated farms in the spawn chunks of my world. If I leave the area to do builds else where beyond the rediculasly short distance of 80 blocks, all the farms stop working.

This is not the case on any other version of mincraft I have played, and makes it virtuall imposible to play the game if you need any of the resources the farms produce since you have to just stand there watching them till you get what you need. very boring.