One occurs naturally and thus happens all around us without human interaction. So there's value in understanding how things work without any input from humans.
One is more like studying a natural process while the other is the mechanics of that process.
Yes exactly. The fruit might be the same at the end of the day; red, round, juicy. But there is more that goes into growing fruit than just reaping the end product. There is fertilizers which run off into lakes [1], pesticides and herbicides that get into the soil increasingly making soil less fertile [2], market cornering tactics like seed patenting [3]. I think it is more important to study how to make nature do the work of growing food abundantly with as little side-effects as possible, instead of engineering it to with no caution for side-effects.
One is more like studying a natural process while the other is the mechanics of that process.