Canadian peat extraction came in below producers' own expectations across several regions this season, but the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association (CSPMA) is not describing the result as a shortage. In a report dated Sept. 17 and covering conditions through Aug. 31, the association reported substantial regional variation and attributed most of the shortfall to wet weather. It also said that careful inventory management should allow producers to meet customer needs.
That framing matters. This is a story about weather-driven variability in an outdoor-harvested raw material, not a declaration that peat is running out. For growers, the more useful question is not whether peat will disappear, but how resilient a growing-media strategy is when one of its components becomes harder or more expensive to secure.
Extraction results varied sharply by region
CSPMA measures extraction against what producers calculated they would need for the season. By that measure, the reported results were:
- Alberta: 56% of expected extraction
- Manitoba: 79%
- Saskatchewan: 90%
- Québec's North and South Shores: 77%
- Southern New Brunswick: 70%
- Northern New Brunswick: 85%
- Ontario: 90%
Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia were reported as significantly below expected levels.
It is worth being precise about what those percentages represent. CSPMA's "expected extraction" is not a measure of how much available peatland was harvested. According to the association, 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. A low percentage therefore reflects a gap against a planning target, not an estimate of remaining resource.
The risk picture 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 changes, and transportation is particularly difficult 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 volatility. For a bulky input such as growing media, delivered cost can change the answer to a sourcing decision very quickly.
Dr. Charlie Hall has made a similar 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 decision once freight, inventory and operational impacts are included.
That is why raw-material selection should stop being treated as a once-a-year purchasing exercise. It is becoming 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 the way it arguably should be: starting with what is available — peat, coir, bark, wood fiber, perlite or another familiar component — and then constructing a mix around those ingredients.
A better starting point is the crop. What character does the root zone need? How much water holding? How much 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?
Once those requirements are clear, growers can work back into the ingredients and percentages that create that character. This matters because the raw-material toolbox is getting larger. Wageningen University & Research's 2026 work on the future of growing media identifies familiar, 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 make an important point: 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 passed over five years ago
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 is true of regional agricultural residues that can be cleaned, screened, fiberized, composted, stabilized or otherwise processed into more consistent horticultural ingredients.
This is not an argument for replacing a proven substrate simply because something new is available. It is an argument for knowing what else is out there before it is needed. A material also does not have to become 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 inclusion rate is a crop and system question, not a universal prescription, and any new component needs to be trialed and validated before commercial adoption.
Small trials can be strategic. Trial an alternative wood fiber. Look again at rice hulls, bark fractions, coir products or locally available biomass. Understand what changes in irrigation, fertility, handling and crop performance, and build that knowledge before a supply disruption forces the decision.
Local and global sourcing are not either/or
Interest in sourcing closer to home is understandable. Regional materials can reduce transportation exposure and create more 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 make excellent contributions where the feedstock and processing are right. Other biomass streams may become increasingly useful as processing improves.
The more resilient strategy 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.
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.
The industry has had enough reminders in recent years — weather, labor, freight, tariffs and supply-chain disruptions — 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 means the industry will need 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, the season offers a reason to ask 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?
The best time to build flexibility into a growing-media program is while there are still choices. Waiting for a shortage to learn how another raw material behaves narrows the options.