Abstract: The article analyzes approaches to understanding the role of the peasantry as the basis of the Russian nation and culture and a special social community. The ideas of M. M. Kovalevsky, S. N. Yuzhakov, P. A. Sorokin, A.V. Chayanov and T. Shanin are presented. The conclusion is made about the relevance and methodological value of the approaches of representatives of Russian sociology to this issue. The article states that today, among the priority areas of agricultural sociology, the most popular is the study of family farming as a subject of the informal economy sector of the production of environmentally friendly products for the population interested in the development of bio-agriculture and innovative food networks that reduce the distance between food producers and consumers. It is this urgency of the problem that makes peasant studies the most promising direction of agrarian sociology. Taking into account the practical significance of this problem, relying on methodological approaches and developments of domestic and foreign sociologists, the research group of the Ural Agrarian University, based on the network interaction of universities of the Ural region and India, developed a program of initiative cross-cultural sociological research on the topic "Culture of farm labor", the purpose of which is to analyze the value bases of economic behavior of representatives of this social group for designing an effective agricultural policy.