Historically, economic development and growth in Nicaragua have strongly relied on agriculture. Depending on the periods, different value chains mostly oriented toward exports, have played a major role in agricultural growth and in the Nicaraguan economy: cattle and indigo before 1890, coffee from 1890 onward, agroindustrial crops (banana, cotton, and sugar) in the 1950-70s, cattle and agro-industrial crops (sugar cane, banana, oil palm, groundnut, etc.) from the 1980s up to date. In that context, contrasting political and economic models have been developed by the different governments, to promote agriculture: a model based on modernization paradigms for the development of agro-exports (1950-79), a state-centered model combining the promotion of agro-exports and food production for the internal market (1980-89), and a freemarket economy model promoting agro-exports (1990-2006). Recently, the government has oriented the agricultural policy to meet several goals: on the one hand, some public program continue to promote agricultural exports, the value chains being currently controlled by strong oligopolistic companies, which are also well inserted into regional and international markets, to sustain economic growth at the national level; on the other hand, newly designed transversal programs propose to target and enhance family agriculture and marginalized forms of agricultural production (indigenous communities, small scale cooperatives, women producers, etc.), in order to reduce rural poverty and inequality. In that context, classifying agricultural holdings to better target the beneficiaries of the differentiated policies and programs in a core strategic issue for the government.