The problem is that the cool protocol for ledgers doesn't actually address many of the business needs while simultaneously being pitched as if it does.

Very few people are arguing that blockchain has no benefit. But it also has costs and in many cases the costs outweigh the benefits. Tracking the provenance of your tomatoes on a blockchain has real costs over putting the data in a database, and you still need to have someone you trust who can vouch that the tomatoes were grown where they said they were. If you're already trusting someone to say "these tomatoes are authentic, Nebraska-grown tomatoes" then you might as well have them manage the whole supply chain.

Also, I don't think many people would complain about a monopoly that had open data access and open protocols and allowed interoperability. If your tomato-supply-chain-management company told you that you couldn't export the data about your tomatoes or you could only access it via their terrible app then THAT would be the argument for moving to a blockchain. If at any time they could inflate the supply of Nebraska-grown tomatoes by clicking a button then that would be an argument for blockchain.

The need for trust is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for putting something on a blockchain. Too often it's presented as sufficient.

There are already technologies that work similarly to blockchain (such as Git) without needing blockchain to work. You can have distributed, immutable databases without blockchain.

Blockchain's only real advantage is that it eliminates the need for trust. If your system doesn't need to be trustless, there are far more efficient (energy and otherwise) tools that already exist and accomplish everything else that blockchain does.