yes i know about, and that what i'm working on now with agriculture skill, but a problem is that when you garter potatoes or any other things you plant yourself you only earn 1 EXP point, so it slow it down quite a bit, i go cut spider web on the mine to help rise my standing and EXP in addition to the little look, who is sometime quite valuable
@lopipati yes, the early game grind is very tough, but soon you will figure out a way to farm and cook food, once you have mastered that, you wont need to sleep ever again, maybe only to restore some WP, but once you have found your choice of food, the game gets very easy. I also struggled on my first play through, I restarted my game 9 times. and now I have a very easy game, even the Terror Bird - hardest monster in the game, only takes me two turns to kill.
I dont want to spoil the fun for you, but for me, the easiest food to gather and cook is Baked Potato and Lotus Chips., once you have these, you will have a much easier time gaining Craft EXP then much easier Battle EXP because you will eventually buy better weapons and armor.
The reason the nodes that you farm on your farm only give 1 exp is because a lot of people asked for the farm node exp to be nerfed early in the game development as it made the Agriculture Skill severely overpowered compared to all other skills as it both provided the player with exactly the materials they needed at the time and large amounts of exp without so much as leaving their house zone. This decision is not final though and may be rebalanced in the future.
Also, it is the level of the skill specialisation that needs to be leveled up to decrease the amount of VP that action takes (so Botany in your case), not the Skill itself, I made a mistake in the explanation sorry! pinocchio8400a's explanation was correct in that regard.