The objective of this paper is to explore the entities which have developed private farms (trang trai) successfully in Vietnam. During the last ten years of their development process, various types of private farms have emerged. It is noteworthy prominent that the owners of successful private farms are not necessarily agricultural households but also include government officials and the urban wealthy. Mainly based on data collected from the author’s field surveys in Vietnam from 2006 to 2011, the paper attempts to categorize patterns observed in the development of private farms and analyze the differences. Then, the paper will argue that private farms developed by agricultural households are still limited because of the difficulty of consolidating land.