Make a living...

I would say that cooking could be the saving grace of foraging, but most likely we will get seeds for most the things that gathering can supply. (just like cotton, nightshade, mandrake, garlic, applies, pumpkins).
There are a few places you can gather coconuts, and if anyone finds a pecan spot, then that will be in demand from cooks, but currently foraging and/or cooking isn't fleshed out enough to make a living from just foraging..
It is more of an addon skill you do while doing something else.

I could see them changing foraging so that it has a chance to get the seeds needed for farming, but most likely farmers are going to get that too.
Really just way to much overlap between farming and foraging at the moment, only one cash crop (beetle carapice), I could see tons of ways they could fix foraging to make it useful, but I don't ever seen pure regs forager being profitable use of time.

 

Everything you said seems to be totally right on. Stuff to think about. Perhaps the part you said about not worth folling around with besides raising the skill might be the big kicker. Maybe skill is what makes the difference between being profitable at selling reagents and having enough for yourself vs just being able to gather enough reagents to get by with for the time???

Seems like having meticulous gathering skills up high and harvesting more per node is beneficial.