I would venture to say that the majority of farmers who farm 5000 acres or more would be more than happy to give up their government payments if everyone had to give up their government payments at the same time. The reason I say this is because in general, the larger farmers are on the ball enough to realize the following:

The only thing government payments do is make land more expensive. I would venture to say that in the long run if you took xxx dollars of government payments from xxx entity the expenses of said entity would decrease by approximately the same amount. This is because government payments are income that is associated with a particular piece of ground. It is guaranteed income and thus it makes the land more valuable than it would have been without that guaranteed income. As such it is more expensive to rent it.

What I'm saying is that government payments are going into the pockets of land owners in the form of increased rent rather than into the pockets of the tenants.

You give up your government payments and convince everyone else to give up theirs, and I'll for dang sure give up mine. I don't need the red tape. I'm not saying smaller farmers are not capable of understanding these things. I fit in the smaller farmer category right now. I'm just saying that if someone has gotten that large, it wasn't an accident and they probably realize how things work.