Canadian peat extraction figures released this autumn show wide regional variation — but the numbers, and the guidance that accompanies them, argue for planning rather than alarm. The Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association's (CSPMA) Sept. 17 report, covering conditions through Aug. 31, put Alberta at 56% of expected extraction, Manitoba at 79%, Saskatchewan at 90%, Québec's North and South Shores 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.
CSPMA attributes much of the shortfall to wet weather. Just as important, 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 understanding what "expected extraction" measures. According to CSPMA, it is not the amount of available peatland that was harvested. It is the volume producers calculated they needed for the season — market requirements plus the desired year-end inventory buffer, minus inventory carried into 2026. A percentage below 100 therefore reflects a comparison against a planned target, not an empty reserve.
The more useful question for growers, then, is not whether peat will run out. As the author frames it, it is how resilient a growing-media strategy is when one of the materials it depends on becomes harder or more expensive to secure.
The Risk Picture Is Broader Than Peat
Peat is only one part of a wider 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 free-on-board price moves.
Transportation is especially difficult at the moment. 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 volatility. For a bulky input such as growing media, delivered cost can change a sourcing decision very quickly.
Dr. Charlie Hall has made a related point from the broader grower-cost perspective. In a recent Greenhouse Grower interview, Hall 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 choice once freight, inventory and operational impacts are included. The implication is that raw-material selection is becoming a risk-management and production-design decision rather than a once-a-year purchasing exercise.
Start With the Crop, Then Work Back to Ingredients
Growing media is often built in the opposite direction from what the author recommends. The common approach starts with what is available — peat, coir, bark, wood fiber, perlite or another familiar component — and then assembles 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 must hold through the crop cycle? How does the material need to rewet? What buffering and chemistry can the crop and irrigation program tolerate? How uniform must it be for automation? Once those requirements are clear, the ingredients and percentages can be chosen to 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, alongside 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, in other words, 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 several years ago may deserve another look. The same applies to regional agricultural residues that can be cleaned, screened, fiberized, composted or otherwise stabilized into more consistent horticultural 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 make up 30% or 40% of a formulation to be useful; in some systems a 5% or 10% inclusion may be enough to shift cost, water behavior, structure, rewetting or supply exposure. The right inclusion rate is a crop and system question rather than a universal prescription, and any new component needs to be trialed and validated before commercial adoption.
Small trials, in that light, become strategic. Trialing an alternative wood fiber, or revisiting rice hulls, bark fractions, coir products or locally available biomass, can reveal what changes in irrigation, fertility, handling and crop performance. The knowledge is built before a supply disruption forces a decision.
Local and Global Are Not an Either/Or
Interest in sourcing closer to home is understandable. Regional materials can reduce transportation exposure and add 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 yet 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 well where feedstock and processing are right, and other biomass streams may become more useful as processing improves.
A more resilient approach is likely to be 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.
Treat 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.
The industry has had enough reminders in recent years — weather, labor, freight, tariffs and supply-chain disruption — to know that yesterday's dependable supply pattern is not guaranteed to remain tomorrow's. Growing-media demand is also getting larger: Wageningen research projects global demand rising substantially toward 2050, which implies a need for a broader basket of materials and more processing capacity rather than a different winner in the peat-versus-coir-versus-wood-fiber debate.
For growers planning 2027, the author suggests a few practical questions: Which raw materials are most exposed in my current formulation? What is their true delivered cost? Which characteristics are essential to my crop? What other ingredients could deliver part of that function? And which of those should I begin trialing now? The best time to build flexibility into a growing-media program, the argument goes, is while there are still choices.