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I completely forgot about the material component of the spell!

The spell requires three plants that are destroyed as part of the spell ('converts' plant matter, and magician 'rips up' the plants). It's not really fair to say "oh, a big plant can count for three or be reused" - the spell is throwing adventurers a bone by saying that it doesn't matter how scraggly a plant is, so try to say big things count for more should only support the counter argument where little things count for less.

Our Plant Feast factory feeding 1000 people a day must create 3000 meals per day. At 10 meals per cast, that's 300 casts, requiring NINE HUNDRED plants. PER DAY. That seems impossible to me within an urban mass (i.e., city), and the city/village would have to be relatively small for this type of vegetation to be renewably available within a ~1 hour wagon ride from the service point (if we're producing it outside the city).

Our other Elementalist are of limited help here. Thrive is basically instantaneous and can only be done once per week per area. Nutritious Earth allows plants to grow at double the speed, but it would still takes a day or two for a see to germinate, and if we're using freshly germinated seeds here, I think we're really, really warping the spirit of the spell.

I suppose multiple large caravans every day could be shipping seedlings into the city to this bizarre factory building where massive amounts of food comes out, but I really don't think that'd go unnoticed. And since we're now even further out from the city for production otherwise, we've broken our spell duration.

I think this really puts a pin in the idea of Plant Feast for industrial urban use.

One thing that has not been mentioned yet is Astral Clouding. This could turn out to be a huge problem for any large scale long term centralized spellcasting operation in any but a totally clear area.

As the spellcaster casts the spell, his matrix filters out the astral corruption, which stays in astral space. Anybody who casts hundreds of spells a day at the same place is going to find the astral space of the area where they cast all these spells quickly gunking up.

Adventurers can chain cast all their protective spells many times per day, but they are usually on the move when they do so. Anybody trying to sit still and cast hundreds of spells per day are within days or weeks going to find themselves in a tainted, or eventually corrupt area.

I don't think Astral Clouding is a thing in ED4, much like I don't think there are plans to reintroduce Depatterning. Could be wrong though.

Still, whether Clouding is still a thing, it's a good point - with that amount activity, even with spell matrices, I imagine it would attract a good amount of attention in astral space, perking the interest of the many entities that can see or travel there. Plus, as I think someone mentioned earlier, if someone/something wants to make a major splash with minimal effort, then tainting/corrupting the people manufacturing the food would be HUGE.

I don't think parties feeding themselves exclusively with Plant Feast is out of bounds. The spell explicitly states that it is as nutritious as the original, so even if the juicy ground beef as been replaced by mildly repulsive brown twigs and berries, it still gives you all the macro and micro nutrients you'd find in the beef.

Here are the ways adventurers can feed themselves when they're in the wild:
- Wilderness Survival (risky, but doable)
- Rations (food brick)
- Plant Feast

Rations are the true food brick - unappealing in most every way, but completely capable of sustaining an adventurer. Plant Feast, meanwhile, tastes incredible once you get past the appearance, and is also completely capable of sustaining an adventurer.

As someone said early, relying solely on Plant Feast can be risky. The Elementalists could fall ill or be captured, and there may be no plants (very likely if you're subterranean or high in the mountains). Any adventurer should really carry a few days, maybe a week, of rations, just to be on the safe side. Also, IIRC, Wilderness Survival is a default skill ... but that's gonna peter out quickly in anything but very forgiving terrain.