The main trends in the training of personnel for agriculture are analyzed in the article. It is proved that in Russia and in the Vologda oblast over the last 10 years a fold decrease in the number of people completing their studies in the secondary professional education institutions on specialties of agrarian profile have been watched. Problems in the system of higher agricultural education are identified. In particular, the partiality of the universities’ performance effectiveness monitoring, organized by the Ministry of education and science in Russia, as well as the fallacy in the policy of financing termination “non-core” specialties is justified. Reasons of the fundamentality of education and quality of specialists training low level in universities are identified. Based on the analysis of managers’ questionnaires data in agricultural enterprises, as well as on monitoring of the All-Russia research Institute of agricultural Economics the urgency of the problem to retain young professionals in the agricultural sector is proved. It is shown that in the rural society since 2010 the share of migration-minded people is increasing. It is established that the main reasons are poor conditions of rural life, the lack of prestige of agriculture professions, and low financial motivation of specialists. The specific measures, the implementation of which will contribute to the solution of key problems in the sphere of training and attracting specialists to agriculture are proposed.