The Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association's Sept. 17 report, covering conditions through Aug. 31, shows substantial regional variation in peat extraction. Alberta reached 56% of expected extraction, Manitoba 79%, Saskatchewan 90%, Québec's North and South Shores 77%, Southern New Brunswick 70%, Northern New Brunswick 85%, and Ontario 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 and says careful inventory management should allow producers to meet customer needs. It also notes that its "expected extraction" figure is not a measure of how much available peatland was harvested. Instead, it reflects the amount producers calculated they needed for the season: market requirements plus the desired year-end inventory buffer, minus inventory carried into 2026.
The Risk Extends Beyond Peat
Peat is 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 well before its FOB price moves.
Transportation is a particular pressure point. 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 prices, driver availability, rail surcharges, and ocean freight all add volatility. For a bulky input such as growing media, delivered cost can quickly change the answer to a sourcing decision.
Dr. Charlie Hall has made a similar point from a 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 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 conclusion the author draws is that raw-material selection should no longer be treated as a once-a-year purchasing exercise. It is becoming a risk-management and production-design decision.
Start With Crop Character, Then Work Back to Ingredients
Growing media is often built in the opposite direction from the way it should be, the author argues. The common approach starts with what is available — peat, coir, bark, wood fiber, perlite, or another familiar component — and then builds a mix around those ingredients.
A more effective 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? Once those requirements are clear, the ingredients and percentages that can create that character can be selected.
This matters because the raw-material toolbox is getting larger. 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, along with 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 ingredients.
The author is not suggesting growers replace a proven substrate simply because something new is available, but rather that they understand what else exists before they need it. 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 change 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.
Local and Global Sourcing Is Not an Either/Or Choice
Sourcing closer to home has understandable appeal. 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 important and effective growing-media component, and wood fiber and bark can contribute well where feedstock and processing are right. A more resilient approach 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 a crop requires.
Using This Season as a Planning Signal
The takeaway from this year's Canadian peat harvest is not that growers should abandon 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 expanding. Wageningen research projects global demand rising substantially toward 2050, which suggests the industry will need 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 the 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 easier while choices remain. As the article puts it, the best time to learn how another raw material behaves is before a shortage forces the decision.