If it wasn't better for the farmers, how come farmers outcompeted hunter-gatherers and pastoralists almost everywhere?

The argument that hunter-gathering is superior to farming is based on some quality-of-life comparisons, most notably the fact that modern hunter-gatherers spend a surprisingly little amount of their time actually acquiring food (something like 2-3 hours a day). Most anthropologists are extremely skeptical of comparing modern hunter-gatherers with Paleolithic hunter-gatherer cultures, particularly the ones that would develop into agricultural societies.

The main reason that farmers outcompete hunter-gatherers is that agriculture allows building larger societies than hunter-gathering can, and this extra population gives a decisive advantage in being able to prosecute wars for as long as is necessary to exterminate hunter-gatherers.

> the fact that modern hunter-gatherers spend a surprisingly little amount of their time actually acquiring food (something like 2-3 hours a day)

Thinking about this a bit deeper, this is only true if you have a small population with relatively plentiful resources. Hunter gatherers quickly bump into the limits of their environment if their population increases. The idealization of their lifestyle is misguided because it would necessitate drastic reduction of population levels to reach that balance. The goal should be to increase the abundance of resources in our modern environment so that we reach the same ratio of resources to population, which hopefully would mean a consequent reduction in the amount of effort we have to expend to obtain those resources.

Farming allowed populations to grow but individuals were much more susceptible to abuse, violence, exploitation, disease and a life of chronic back pain