Agri-Food Pilot: closed, and what to apply for now

Is the Agri-Food Pilot still open in 2026?

No. IRCC's own page is unambiguous: “The Agri-Food Pilot ended on May 14, 2025. We'll continue to process applications we accepted before this date.” The page carries a 2026-04-27 update date, so this is a current, maintained closure notice, not a stale one. You cannot submit a new Agri-Food Pilot application today, from inside or outside Canada, regardless of how strong your job offer or work history is.

Several third-party immigration sites still describe the pilot as though it is open in 2026, in some cases with the year in their own page title. That is out of date. If you have read elsewhere that you can still apply, treat that source with real caution and confirm the closed status directly on canada.ca before you spend time or money on it.

Why IRCC closed the Agri-Food Pilot on May 14, 2025

IRCC has not published a detailed explanation beyond the pilot reaching its planned end date. What is visible is the broader pattern it sits inside. On 18 February 2026, IRCC retired the Express Entry agriculture and agri-food category entirely when it announced the 2026 category list, replacing it with five new categories (physicians with Canadian work experience, researchers, senior managers, transport occupations and skilled military recruits) and raising the qualifying work-experience threshold for renewed occupational categories from six months to twelve. See our Express Entry category-based draws guide for the current list.

At the same time, the Immigration Levels Plan groups agri-food with caregiver programs, community pilots and the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot under a single, comparatively small federal economic pilots allocation, roughly 8,175 to 8,775 admission spaces across the current plan years, a fraction of the space given to Express Entry or the Provincial Nominee Program. Read together, these are not one isolated closure; they are a wider move away from a standalone federal agri-food route and toward provincial, employer-led selection instead.

What happens to Agri-Food Pilot applications already in IRCC's queue?

If your application reached IRCC before May 14, 2025, it did not disappear with the program. IRCC's own wording confirms it: applications accepted before the end date continue to be processed and will be assessed against the eligibility rules that applied when you filed, not any later change. You do not need to reapply, resubmit documents because the pilot closed, or take any action purely because of the closure itself.

What does matter is your temporary status while you wait. Applicants still inside Canada on an expiring work permit are the group we see run into trouble here, because a maintained-status gap is a real risk even for a genuine, accepted PR application. If your work permit is due to expire and your Agri-Food Pilot file has reached the acknowledgement-of-receipt stage, ask us whether a bridging open work permit can hold your status until IRCC decides your case, the same as it does for other federal economic-class applicants.

Agri-Food Pilot processing time: what applicants still in the queue should expect

This is the question we get asked most about the closed pilot, and it deserves an honest answer rather than an invented number. As of September 2026, the Agri-Food Pilot no longer appears as a selectable category in IRCC's Check Processing Timestool at all, we checked directly and confirmed it: the tool's current economic-class options run from the Atlantic Immigration Program through Provincial Nominees to Skilled Workers, with no Agri-Food entry among them. That almost certainly means IRCC has stopped publishing a dedicated figure for a closed, low-volume pilot rather than that processing has stopped.

Practically, that leaves two honest options. First, track your own file's status through your IRCC online account, which shows your specific application's stage rather than a program average. Second, plan against the general expectations for a federal economic-class permanent residence application still working through the queue, rather than a fixed timeframe we cannot verify. We would rather tell you plainly that no current figure exists than quote a number pulled from an old cache.

Will the Agri-Food Pilot reopen?

We do not know, and anyone who tells you it definitely will, or gives you a date, is guessing. What we can tell you honestly is the direction the evidence points. IRCC has made no announcement of a reopening, a renewal, or a like-for-like federal replacement. The Express Entry agriculture and agri-food category, the closest thing the pilot had to a federal successor, was itself retired on 18 February 2026 rather than expanded. And the Immigration Levels Plan keeps the whole federal economic pilots basket, agri-food included, comparatively small next to Express Entry and the Provincial Nominee Program.

None of that rules out a future federal agri-food route; immigration policy in this area has shifted before and can shift again. But if agriculture or agri-food work is genuinely your plan to reach Canada, waiting on a reopening that may not come is a weaker strategy than applying under a route that is open today. We watch the Levels Plan and IRCC announcements and will update this page the moment that changes.

What the Agri-Food Pilot required (the archived eligibility rules)

We keep the archived criteria here because they still matter for two groups: applicants whose file is still in the queue and being assessed against them, and readers trying to understand whether their profile would have qualified. None of the figures below are current application rules; the pilot is closed to new applicants.

Which industries and NOC codes were eligible under the Agri-Food Pilot?

The pilot was built around a fixed list of industries, classified by NAICS code, each carrying its own set of eligible NOC occupations. Understanding this list still matters, because most of the same industries reappear, under different names, in the provincial routes below.

Notice how much of this list is lower-skilled, hands-on production work. That single fact drives most of the alternatives section below: general farm labour, harvesting and food-processing roles typically sit at NOC TEER 4 or 5, which never qualified for Express Entry on their own and still don't, while farm supervisors and specialized technicians sit closer to TEER 2 or 3 and have more federal options open to them.

Agri-Food Pilot alternatives: where agriculture and agri-food workers go now

With the federal pilot closed, the realistic question is which open route matches your province, your job offer and your occupation's NOC TEER level. There is no single replacement; the field has split across a handful of provincial and community routes plus, for a narrower group, Express Entry itself. The table below maps the profile you likely had under the Agri-Food Pilot to where it now fits.

Express Entry category-based draws for agriculture and agri-food occupations

The most important thing to understand here is what is not available anymore: Express Entry retired its dedicated agriculture and agri-food category on 18 February 2026, when IRCC announced the 2026 category list and added five new categories in its place. There is no longer a targeted, lower-CRS-cutoff round for this sector.

That leaves two paths inside Express Entry, and both come with real limits. If you have at least a year of qualifying Canadian work experience in a TEER 0 to 3 occupation, roles such as farm supervisors or specialized agri-food technicians can qualify, you may be eligible for the Canadian Experience Class and could be invited in a CEC round or another category your experience happens to fit. If your occupation sits at TEER 4 or 5, general farm labour, harvesting and most food-processing roles, Express Entry is not available to you at all, no matter how long you have worked or how strong your employer's support is; TEER 4 and 5 roles fall outside the system entirely. See our Express Entry category-based draws guide for the current category list and recent cut-offs.

Provincial nominee streams for farm, greenhouse and food-processing workers

For most former Agri-Food Pilot workers, especially those in TEER 4 or 5 roles, a Provincial Nominee Program employer stream is now the realistic route, because provinces set their own occupation lists and are not bound by Express Entry's TEER 0 to 3 ceiling. Saskatchewan runs the most directly comparable route, the Agriculture Talent Pathway, a sector-specific SINP stream built for agriculture and agri-food workers with an eligible Saskatchewan job offer, roughly half of the province's 2026 nomination allocation of about 4,761 spaces is reserved for priority sectors including agriculture.

Other provinces do not run an identically named route, but most operate a general employer-driven or in-demand skills stream that a genuine agriculture or agri-food job offer can fit, particularly where the employer supports an LMIA-based work permit. Because eligible occupations and intake windows vary by province and change over time, the safest approach is a case-by-case check against the current criteria for your specific province rather than assuming any one stream applies.

Keeping your status while you wait or switch: work permits after the pilot

Whether you are waiting on a queued Agri-Food Pilot application or switching to a new provincial route, keeping valid temporary status in the meantime is not optional. Two work-permit tools do most of the work here. An LMIA-supported work permit is usually how a new agriculture or agri-food job offer becomes a legal basis to work in Canada while you build the Canadian experience or provincial connection a PR route needs.

If you already have a permanent-residence application in process, whether it is a queued Agri-Food Pilot file or a new provincial nomination that has reached the federal PR stage, and your current work permit is expiring, a bridging open work permit can maintain your status until IRCC decides your case, provided your PR application has reached the required stage. Do not let a work permit lapse while a decision is pending; a status gap is a genuinely avoidable risk on an otherwise strong file.

1. 01

   Check your current status

   Confirm your work permit's expiry date and, if you have a queued PR application, its current stage in your IRCC online account.

2. 02

   Identify the live route that fits

   Match your province, job offer and NOC TEER level against the Saskatchewan Agriculture Talent Pathway, another PNP stream, or a community pilot.

3. 03

   Secure or confirm the job offer

   Provincial routes are employer-driven; a genuine, qualifying offer from an eligible employer is the gateway to almost every alternative.

4. 04

   Bridge your status if needed

   If your work permit is expiring while a PR application is pending, apply for a bridging open work permit before it lapses.

5. 05

   Apply under the open route

   Build the application against the current provincial or federal criteria, not the archived Agri-Food Pilot rules.

Saskatchewan Agriculture Talent Pathway vs Alberta Farm Stream vs the rural pilot: which fits you?

These three routes get confused with each other and with the closed pilot more than any others, because they all touch agriculture. They are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one wastes months.

The distinction that trips people up most is between the Saskatchewan pathway and the Alberta Farm Stream: both have “farm” or “agriculture” in the name, but one is for employees and the other is for owner-operators with the net worth to buy a farming business. If you worked for someone else under the Agri-Food Pilot, the Farm Stream almost never fits; if you have the capital and hands-on management background to buy and run a farm yourself, it might be a stronger route than any worker stream.

Mistakes we see agri-food workers make after the closure

A handful of avoidable errors show up again and again in the files we review from people whose Agri-Food plan collapsed with the closure.

• Waiting on a reopening instead of acting. Months pass while a worker hopes the pilot comes back, and their work-permit clock keeps running down. Nothing in the current evidence suggests a fast return; a live route today beats a hoped-for one later.
• Reading an out-of-date guide as current. Several agency pages still describe the pilot as an open 2026 program. Following instructions written for a closed pilot leads nowhere.
• Assuming Express Entry is automatically the fallback. Most Agri-Food occupations are TEER 4 or 5, which Express Entry does not accept at any CRS score. Building a plan around a CEC application that can never be submitted wastes real time.
• Confusing the Alberta Farm Stream with a worker route. It is a business and investment stream for owner-operators, not an alternative for someone with an agricultural job offer and no capital to buy a farm.
• Letting a work permit lapse while a PR file is pending. A status gap can complicate an otherwise strong case; a bridging open work permit is often available and frequently overlooked.

How we help agri-food workers rebuild a PR plan

Working under a licensed RCIC (CICC #R706497), we start by mapping your actual profile, province, current job offer or employer relationship, occupation and its NOC TEER level, and any Canadian work experience, against the routes that are open today rather than the closed pilot you may have been counting on. That usually means checking the Saskatchewan Agriculture Talent Pathway, a Provincial Nominee Program stream in your own province, and, only where your occupation and experience genuinely qualify, an Express Entry route through the Canadian Experience Class.

If you have a file already in IRCC's queue from before May 14, 2025, we can review where it stands and whether a bridging open work permit should be part of your plan while you wait. We work entirely online, our scope is standard RCIC work with no Quebec files, and we will tell you plainly if a route does not fit rather than let you invest in one that will not work. Prefer to check your options yourself first? Try our free eligibility checker, then get started with a licensed RCIC when you are ready for a full assessment.