These very wealthy “gentleman farmers” always have the option of simply giving it back, you know. Or doing some Don Imus sort of thing like supporting a rural retreat for the “underpriviliged” kids, which would be a way of maximizing the return of the dollars that would be simply sprinkles on the icing, so to speak.
Most of these payments are for “CRP” land, that is intentionally held out of production, and is sort of a strategic reserve for farmland, meant to artificially reduce the total production of agricultural goods, either as feed grains or as pasture land. This practice is also used to reduce the pressure on “environmentally sensitive” land, subject to flooding or erosion. It is a means of ensuring the level of a “livable” rate of return for land ownership, and is really not that new of an idea, since it was originally instituted in the early days of the New Deal.
These farmland use restriction payments do absolutely nothing for farms below a certain minimum size.