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This paper contributes to a political economy of rural development based on the case of poor farmers. It focuses on dependency practices developed within rural communities by farmers or organized through the implementation of public development policies. It presents the rise of a new rural order based on the spread of a politicized rhetoric, on the growing dependency of poor farmers via the transformation of peasant ways of sharing resources or by means of a shift in public policies. The article concludes with an analysis of the public management of peasant debt and the nature of the governance of poor farmers.