One way to be informed is to learn facts. Another way is to learn about how other people live, so that you can empathize with them, gain perspective on the lives they live, and then are better able to understand the context for those other facts you learn.
Fiction does more than entertain, the best fiction exercises our humanity in ways which might not be possible with nonfiction.
Nonfiction need not read like crop reports or scientific papers. The best analogy is to photography. Photography is by its nature nonfiction, and yet we recognize that all photographs are not equal. Some are beautiful, some are moving, some are dry and clinical. They all inform, but some do more.
"The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended..."
Not every story should be structured as a scientific document.