You don't actually need 48 different types of mana beans in a farm. You only need a few of the hard to get ones like lucrum, aurum, alienis, maybe metallum. It depends on what other methods you have for obtaining aspects. A simple tree farm along with some automated crafting, will get you a good chunk of the commonly needed aspects. A netherwart farm will get you pretty much everything else. Just use the mana beans to fill in the gaps.
A tree farm can net you Aer, Aqua, Arbor, Bestia, Cognito, Fabrico, Herba, Humanus, Ignis, Instrumentum, Iter, Lux, Machina, Meto, Motus, Ordo, Perdito, Perfodio, Potentia,Telum, Terra, Vacuous, and Victus. Possibly a few others.