In the UK this is doubly true, because you also receive your subsidy from the EU for owning that land. In fact in many ways farming it less efficiently gets you more as you can qualify for environmental uplifts for using less fertilizer and keeping bigger headlands and hedges.
It's worth metioning that this distribution system is decided by the UK government (or possibly Eng/Scot etc governements). The EU allocates subsidy to the member nations according to one system (not accounting for e.g. bigger hedges), which allocate subsidy to farmer/business according to their own system. It is entirely possible for the UK government, within the EU, to allocate money to farms as an insurance system against bad years, or to encourage profitability at all costs, or in another way.
