Classic technical assistance to local resource users in tropical agrarian frontiers has shown important successes but also has been criticized for being expensive, dependency creating, and destructive to traditional social-ecological systems. Alternatively, supporting rural families by improving their contexts might have the potential to more effectively unlock the individual and collective capacities of local resource users. This literature review systematically explores the state of knowledge on contextual interventions and their effects on small-scale farmers. It outlines five contextual categories and 17 contextual elements, and document for each element the quality of data, as well as the reported social, economic, and environmental effects. Literature on local development effects of contextual elements increased considerably in the last 40 years with an increasing focus on governance, but there are still important blind spots regarding the effect of education and logistics. Overall, the review indicates that contextual interventions should be more considered to support rural families in tropical agrarian frontiers.