This is a very important question. To change the nature of American farming, we have to provide a higher profit margin than the current paradigm to entice current large farms to make the switch to environmental sustainability. Farms are barely profitable now. This should be a low bar to hurdle, but permaculture is falling short in profitability and therefore viability for large scale farm replacement. If, as a community, we can solve this problem for conventional agriculture, then they will slowly start converting and changing the American food supply. This is the holy grail of sustainability. Part of the problem is that food is cheap. As food prices rise the scale of profitability could tip.
Geoff Lawton suggests everyone growing food for themselves and a couple neighbors on suburban lots is a new approach to the food supply chain. While this could work and is an admirable direction, not everyone has an interest in food production. The economy runs on people specializing. There is a guy, I don't know his name, who is making a living farming suburban lots. He provides a produce box to the property owner and sells the surplus at a farmers market. He is profitable. There is another guy buying cheap land in Detroit and planting fruit and nut trees. He may be profitable, but he found an opportunity that we don't all have access to.
One of the problems, as you noticed, is that the people who are drawn to permaculture aren't interested in profitability and in some cases are repulsed by the concept. People who are focused on profitability are not looking at farms or the environment. You sir, are rare. However this intersection is the key to tipping permaculture from fringe to mainstream, which is something we can all get behind.
