I agree with your post, except I posit that pot is actually easier to grow than tomatoes.
It is the prize-winning, enormous pot that requires a high level of effort and nutrients, and which resuts in a spoilation of the environment.
The prize winning, enormous pot is grown exclusively indoors, to avoid seeding, in hydoponics.
Short story: my friend contracted to have his house built. Apparently, some of the workers had rolled themselves a joint while on the job & threw the seeds in the back yard. One female sprouted & grew. We looked at it & it was full of seeds. Where had all the pollen come from that journeyed over 10-15 acres to fertilize this female plant? Moral of story: don’t grow outside.
The nutrients are the same as all farmers use to grow a maximum crop & pose no more danger to the environment than a bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer. Obviously, no herbicides are needed indoors, & pesticides cannot be sprayed on a flowering crop without the possibility of tainting the crop.
Most small growers do so for their own consumption & share with friends/family. Unless they are idiots, they are loathe to use chemical poisons.
The damage to our parks is primarily caused by the clearing of land to grow the crops, which often causes erosion, & herbicides which kill the native plants.