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This article examines how new tools to control and manage agricultural development policy were introduced in the early 1970s. This managerial turn was not imposed from the outside, but was part and parcel of internal fights in French professional agricultural organisations and specific administrative branches. The new methods introduced in the wake of the Rationalisation des choix budgétaires (RCB, Rationalisation of Budget Choices) policy helped to delegitimise the traditional concept of agricultural development, which linked the selection of farmers with the promotion of family farms, instead favouring the fragmentation of the work of the agricultural council, relying on performance indicators, and encouraging specialisation and intensification.