Amusingly, this change IS the middle ground between the old-old, and the old-new; The old-new is what you're calling the 'old' way.
It used to be that crops would be removed from the world when harvested, you had to replant 100% of the time and you didnt get any seeds when harvesting- You had to spend your crops 100% of the time to craft new seeds. Then they changed it to the A18/A19 system, so that crops would remain planted when harvested, but would yield much less crop in return.
And now we have a middle ground, Where you have to replant, but you get seeds back 50% of the time.
I'm sure it might be tweaked, but, May not be in the way you might like.