heck yes, especially if i am (theoretically) replacing other buildings that produce a similar amount of seeds but have 5000
now if this one produced an extraordinary amount of seeds, that would be different.
Yes, I did not like the abysmal Culture stats for Tender Tag Teams either. In Chapter 12 the seed production in seeds-per-hour-per-square for the Tender Tag Team is a 15% better than the Festival Merchant. Significant, but not "extraordinary", as you say.
Another disadvantage is that the Tender Tag Team production cycle is 24 hours versus 12 hours for the Festival Merchant (and earlier collections are proportional to the length of the full cycle). For a decaying resource, I would sooner be collecting it more often so as to potentially avoid a decay.
Lastly, the Festival Merchants are easily replaced from the Magic Academy when I progress to a new chapter, versus spending 12 Royal Restorations to upgrade two Tender Tag Teams (at least for me, that's not going to happen). So if I did deploy the Tender Tag Teams I would be replacing them with Festival Merchants in the next chapter anyway. So I decided to give the Tender Tag Teams a miss.