Growers watching the growing-media supply chain received a fresh set of data points in mid-September, when the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association (CSPMA) released a report covering conditions through Aug. 31. The numbers, published Sept. 17, reveal wide regional variation in peat extraction rather than a single national picture.
Alberta reached 56% of expected extraction, Manitoba 79%, and Saskatchewan 90%. Quebec's North and South Shores came in at 77%, Southern New Brunswick at 70%, Northern New Brunswick at 85%, and Ontario at 90%. Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia were reported as significantly below expected levels.
Weather, Inventory, and What "Expected Extraction" Really Measures
CSPMA attributes much of the shortfall to wet weather, and the association says careful inventory management should allow producers to meet customer needs. That distinction matters: this is not a declaration of a peat shortage.
It is also worth being precise about the metric. CSPMA's "expected extraction" is not a measure of how much available peatland was harvested. It is the amount producers calculated they needed for the season — market requirements plus the desired year-end inventory buffer, minus inventory carried into 2026.
For growers, that reframes the question. Instead of asking whether peat will run out, the more useful question is how resilient a growing-media strategy is when a relied-upon material becomes harder or more expensive to secure.
The Risk Is Bigger Than Peat
Peat is only one part of a broader supply picture. Climate affects harvest and biomass availability. Labor affects harvesting, processing, and transportation. Freight can change the economics of a material long before its FOB price moves.
Transportation is especially volatile right now. The Wall Street Journal reported in late September that U.S. contract trucking rates averaged $3.11 per mile in August, including fuel surcharges, up 29% from a year earlier. Diesel, driver availability, rail surcharges, and ocean freight are all adding uncertainty. For a bulky input such as growing media, delivered cost can shift a sourcing decision quickly.
Dr. Charlie Hall has made a similar argument from the broader grower-cost perspective. In a recent Greenhouse Grower interview, he emphasized supply-chain agility, backup suppliers, and working-capital discipline as growers plan for 2027. His Index of Prices Paid by Growers is useful precisely because the cheapest input on paper is not necessarily the lowest-risk or lowest-cost decision once freight, inventory, and operational impacts are included.
That is why raw-material selection is becoming less a once-a-year purchasing exercise and more a risk-management and production-design decision.
Start With Crop Character, Then Back Into Ingredients
Growing media is often built in the opposite direction from what the crop requires. The common approach starts with what is available — peat, coir, bark, wood fiber, perlite, or another familiar component — and builds a mix around those ingredients.
A better starting point is the crop itself: What character does the root zone need? How much water holding and air porosity? What structural stability is required through the crop cycle? How does the material need to rewet? What buffering and chemistry can the crop and irrigation program tolerate? How uniform does it need to be for automation? Only once those requirements are clear does it make sense to work back to the ingredients and percentages that create that character.
This matters because the raw-material toolbox is expanding. Wageningen University & Research's 2026 work on the future of growing media identifies market-accepted materials such as coir, coniferous wood fiber, bark, compost, and perlite, but also less familiar candidates including other plant fibers, biochars, co-composts, and reused growing media. The researchers note that many new materials require processing, sanitization, and stabilization before they can become reliable horticultural inputs. Availability is not the same as suitability — but suitability is increasingly something that can be engineered.
Revisit Materials That Were Passed Over
Processing technology has continued to improve across coir, wood fiber, bark, and other biomass streams. Materials that were too inconsistent, too wet, too coarse, too salty, too difficult to handle, or simply too expensive a few years ago may deserve another look. The same is true of regional agricultural residues that can be cleaned, screened, fiberized, composted, or otherwise processed into more consistent ingredients.
This is not an argument for replacing a proven substrate simply because something new exists. It is an argument for knowing what else is available before it is needed. A material also does not have to reach 30% or 40% of a formulation to be useful; in some systems, a 5% or 10% inclusion may be enough to change cost, water behavior, structure, rewetting, or supply exposure. The right rate is a crop and system question, and any new component needs to be trialed and validated before commercial adoption.
Small trials can become strategic. Trying an alternative wood fiber, or looking again at rice hulls, bark fractions, coir products, or locally available biomass, helps growers understand what changes in irrigation, fertility, handling, and crop performance — and builds knowledge before a supply disruption forces the decision.
Local and Global Are Not an Either/Or
Interest in sourcing closer to home is understandable. Regional materials can reduce transportation exposure and create flexibility, particularly when they can be processed near the point of use. But "local" is not automatically better, just as "imported" is not automatically risky.
Coir, for example, travels a long distance but can offer characteristics that are difficult to reproduce with some local materials. Peat remains an extraordinarily important and effective growing-media component. Wood fiber and bark can contribute strongly where feedstock and processing are right. Other biomass streams may become more useful as processing improves. A more resilient strategy is likely a portfolio: dependable core materials, strong supplier relationships, some regional options, some globally sourced options, and enough formulation knowledge to adjust without losing the root-zone character the crop requires.
Use 2026 as a Planning Signal
The lesson from this year's Canadian peat harvest is not that growers should move away from peat. CSPMA itself says inventory management should allow producers to meet customer requirements. The lesson is that the conditions behind raw materials can change quickly while crops still have to be produced on schedule.
Growing-media demand is also rising. Wageningen research projects global demand increasing substantially toward 2050, which points to a need for a broader basket of materials and more processing capacity — not simply a different winner in the peat-versus-coir-versus-wood-fiber debate.
For growers planning 2027, that suggests a few practical questions: Which raw materials are most exposed in a current formulation? What is their true delivered cost? Which characteristics are essential to the crop? What other ingredients could deliver part of that function? And which of those should be trialed now? Building flexibility into a growing-media program is easiest while choices still exist.
The perspective is drawn from Jennifer Neujahr, a former Director of Horticulture Business for Profile Products and co-founder, with Ted Buis, of Next Step Solutions, whose work centers on moving technologies and materials from concept to commercial adoption.