The article is devoted to the foundation and development of agricultural education and agrarian knowledge among peasants who lived in the Baikal region at the beginning of the XX century. The Baikal region included the territories of Irkutsk province and Transbaikalian region. In the late XIX – early XX century some professional educational institutions as well as agricultural ones opened in Russian periphery. The archives play an important role in researching such an issue as an agricultural education in Baikal region. Archive documents including documents of management and record keeping, circular letters, requests, resolutions of central and local government allow one to form the historiography data base for this problem. Valuable sources of information include, among others, the agronomy organization report of Irkutsk province, volumes of Transbaikalian district agronomy councils, such periodicals as the Zabaikal’sky khozyain magazine and the Zabaikal’sky rabochy and the Irkutskie gubernskye vedomosty newspapers. Based on this historiography data, the article shows the district councils’ activity concerning the organization of the first basic agricultural schools in the Baikal region. The article features some difficulties the local government faced while organizing those establishments. The article also provides information about the wide spread propaganda of agrarian knowledge through the courses and lectures. First agricultural schools that were opened in the late XIX century and on the verge of the revolution of 1917 faced such problems as skilled labor shortage, lack of finance and pecuniary burdens. It was necessary to reorganize them into vocational educational schools. The article features a brief historiography review on the history of agricultural education in the late XIX – early XX centuries in Russia and in Baikal region specifically.