Farming, for the most part is not much more than controlled wild caught. Large ponds are dug and breeding stock is placed in them and they are allowed to do their thing. This has several advantages or traditional WC. First it allows the farms to control predation. They can take steps to keep predatory fish or birds or what have you off their stock thus insuring more babies are brought to saleable size. Second, they can standardize their ponds to make collection easier. If all their ponds are 10 meters wide an 1 meter deep they can use the same collecting equipment on all of them. Third they not only benefit from natural food sources like mosquito larvae etc. but they can also supplement the feeding of the babies to bring them up to saleable size faster. Fourth, they can take steps to prevent disease and parasites by treating the ponds if they so choose. This allows more, healthier individuals to be produced as medications can work to keep down diseases that normally might be assciated with such high population densities.
With such low profits for each item we all know that the only way to make such a venture possible is to maximize the number of items available to sell and reduce expense to the bare minimum. As a result of all the things above more babies can be produced and they can be raised faster than relying strictly on nature. In fact, in countries wher labor costs are low it may be even more economical than traditional WC methods which might entail traveling some distance to the collecting ponds. It also has the effect of making all the animals pretty much the same size when harvested. I think that is why, when you see a tank full of smaller than full adults, but all the same size animals, you can be pretty sure that these animals were farmed.
IMO farmed animals are a step above WC but they should not be seen as the equivilant as a true CBB specimen. The animals are often over crowded which can lead to stress. They still need to be shipped which leads to additional stress. Medications, especially antibiotics, may actually lower their resistence in the long run. In most cases they are still exposed to the open so the exposure to certain parasites that may not be treated for is a possibility.
I just don't see many store being able to obtain true CBB specimens. Still, if you put a fence around a pond so your newts can't get out isn't that in essence keeping them captive. If so, wouldn't any babies technically be captive bred. That is why you see so many farmed animals being listed as CB, and that's why I distinguish between farmed animals as CB or farmed, and true captive bred and born animals as CBB. These animals, the tru CBB ones, are the ones that are produced by the hobbiest who has a male and a female in their care and manipulates the conditions to get their charges to reproduce, and its these animals that I seek out to sell in my store.