Abstract: In modern conditions of import substitution and increased export of agricultural products, it is important to ensure proper legal support for agricultural cooperation as a mechanism that allows combining economic opportunities and sharing risks of agricultural entities. Foreign experience shows that agricultural cooperation is a complex socio-economic mechanism that solves not only economic but also social problems. Legislative regulation of agricultural cooperation has many legal approaches. But in most countries, legal regulation is of a special nature. This makes it possible to reflect the legal features of agricultural cooperatives and form a mechanism for state support. In modern conditions of the proposed unification of legislation on cooperatives, the conclusion that there are objective prerequisites for the preservation of the Federal law "On agricultural cooperation" is justified. In this article, through the prism of the analysis of Russian pre-revolutionary and Soviet legislation, as well as Russian and foreign doctrines of agricultural cooperation, the author reveals the problems of legal regulation of agricultural cooperation and formulates suggestions about the improvement of legal regulation of agricultural cooperation. This led to the conclusion that it is possible to reflect the features of the legal status of agricultural cooperatives as subjects of agricultural activity only through differentiated legal regulation of agricultural cooperation. However, shortcomings of legal regulation require a new version of Federal law "Оn agricultural cooperation".