The communication proposes a transversal and comparative approach at the Latin American level, focusing on legacies, crises and dismantling of public policies dedicated to family agriculture. The results come from a bibliographical analysis and two recent studies on a regional scale, carried out by the Research Network "Public Policies and Rural Development in Latin America" PP-AL. According to our hypothesis, the regression of family agriculture policies was facilitated by four main factors : 1) the global economic context, 2) the distance between popular governments and their social bases, 3) the weakening of social movements and the fact that, in the same period, 4) public support to the agribusiness competing coalition was never so important, leaving a large margin of action to the most reactionary elements of this sector.