What farming actually is is companies using their equity directly as marketing incentives. In principle, there is nothing really wrong with this, although usually companies don't find that to be the most efficient way to use their equity.

The problem with farming was that, in many, but not all, cases, the equity in question had no value. It isn't true that they were all ponzi schemes, though. Many of the tokens did generate and continue to generate quite significant revenue for their holders, e.g. Compound. You can argue that the entire space is a ponzi, but within that space, Compound (among several others) is a legitimate service provider to the casino, and earns real income for doing so.

Farming is really no different from startups paying early employees in options. Its just that the companies were a lot dumber, and it was a lot easier to participate.