This article aims at showing that agricultural modernization in Third World countries is full of misunderstandings, intellegently cultivated by the modernizing elites. These, indeed, claim to build their policies and projects on the urgent need to preserve and improve the very family agriculture which they in fact tend to jeopardize, if not destroy. The author presents a theoretical framework capable of shedding light upon the antagonistic logics opposing the organization of traditional peasantry and modern agriculture. The former’s objective of producing security at the local level cannot be marched with the latter’s one of producing a surplus geared forward national accumulation. Daily bread as against nation’s greatness, such is, in a nutshell, the dilemma facing traditional peasantries confronted with the elites forwarding of agricultural modernity. This dilemma is illustrated with a few examples.
rural modernization; poor rural producers; rural families; accumulation; peasant logic; rural production; State and peasantry