The rediscovery of Aleksandr Chajanov’s The economy of the peasant farm in the 1960s paved the way for a reconsideration of agricultural policies in developing countries. Anthropologists were very quick in absorbing the main contents of Chajanov’s analysis of the farm. They were interested in the decision mechanisms of peasant families, in order to understand their reactions to policies of development. Eventually, family farms came to be seen as an alternative to monoculture and large scale farming. In my contribution I intend to follow the spreading of the family farm model in recent development economics. I will introduce the reader to Chajanov’s view on family farm, sketch how the rediscovery of his work took place in the 1960s, and then move to its long lasting influence on different authors.