Profits and Sustainability

Chris Clayton sees a gap between the aspirations of the sustainable ag movement and the realities of profit-seeking   From the summary of the NAS report being discussed:

This report recommends reaching this goal through two parallel efforts: an incremental
approach, in which ongoing endeavors to develop sustainable agricultural techniques
are expanded; and a transformative approach, in which multiple research areas are brought
together to design farming systems that balance the competing demands from the outset.

The first approach talks of stuff like "no-till" farming; the second is more utopian. I'm conservative enough to doubt our ability to come up with such a set of farming systems. 

For contrast see this post at Treehugger. There's discussion of a "sustainability index", but the discussions by the operator of a 4,000 acre vegetable farm focus on doing more with less. "More with less" easily translates to more profitability; the sustainability index could be a proxy for "more with less".