Scientifically substantiated personnel industry policy contributes to the implementation of an innovative development scenario, provides better results with reduced production costs, which determines the relevance of the studying. The main goal of the work was to identify factors and indicators which have a regulatory influence on the state and development of the personnel potential of the industry. Diagnostics of the labor potential of land reclamation by federal districts revealed leaders and outsiders of sectoral development. The studying made it possible to justify the steady trend of the shortage of reclamation personnel in comparison with the calculated indicators. Objective and subjective reasons and factors that hinder the effective use of the industry’s personnel potential are distinguished. The concept of industry’s labor potential is clarified. The studying of changes in labor productivity in agriculture has confirmed a twofold increase in this indicator for the period from 2014 to 2018. Methodological approaches to the indicators of assessing the labor potential of the reclamation industry are substantiated. The groups of socio-economic indicators of the reclamation industry’s effectiveness are identified. The methodology for determining the quantitative characteristics of labor potential on irrigated lands is specified, which is depended on the area of irrigated lands. The labor potential of the reclamation industry in terms of staffing the industry is studied. The main positive and negative trends of the personnel policy and the labor potential’s formation of the agro-industrial complex’s reclamation sector of the Russian Federation are specified, the industry personnel policy is assessed as passive, which does not allow predicting the needs for industry personnel, evaluate staff activities and analyze personnel problems. Highlighted characteristic trends in personnel potential in the federal district and regions of the Russian Federation allow: to develop unified approaches to manage this industry development factor; to develop recommendations to improve the efficiency of advanced training and retraining of personnel in irrigated agriculture. The implementation of the recommendations will contribute to increasing the efficiency of managing the human potential’s process of irrigated agriculture at the level of federal, regional and municipal authorities of the reclamation sector of the agro-industrial complex of Russia.