It's a big gay.
It makes farming quality patches worse, and bots basically required for optimal growth... Not to say bot weren't required prior to this change, but there's a pretty big difference between planting/harvesting every 55 minutes for your +/- 1, and planting/harvesting every 16 hours or w/e it is for your -/+5.
Arguably unrelated, but having the auto-plant feature plant your best seeds first would be cool too, esp since bots with that logic are already publicly available.