A friend/co-worker of mine is starting to go organic on his farm. This is his first year. He brought in 100 acres of winter wheat this summer. Yield was down 30% BUT so were the costs so his profit was the same. Those fields already have a reasonable amount of microbes and earth worms are already coming back in.
I wouldn't call chemicals the lazy route. If you want big yields, that's what you have to do. The problem is how most farmers measure progress/success. Historically the goal has been to maximize yields and Chemicals do that better than anything else, especially if you're doing no-till. The problem is that the better the yields are, the less the market pays for the crop, and the more Dupont and their friends charge for the chemicals. There's big money to be made, but the farmer doesn't end up getting to keep much of it. If we can shift the focus to minimizing cost, the profits can stay pretty close to the same in the near term, and go up in the long term as the land becomes more fertile on its own. It's hard to see yields drop by 30% and not feel like it was a bad year, but when your bank account says you made just as much money, it eases the pain