The Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association (CSPMA) released a Sept. 17 report covering harvest conditions through Aug. 31, and the results vary widely by region. 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 it also says careful inventory management should allow producers to meet customer needs. That distinction matters: this is not a declaration of a peat shortage.
What "Expected Extraction" Actually Measures
CSPMA's "expected extraction" is not a measure of how much available peatland was harvested. Rather, 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 framing the author favors for growers is therefore not "Will we run out of peat?" but "How resilient is my growing-media strategy when one of the materials I depend on becomes harder or more expensive to secure?"
Risk Extends Beyond Peat
Peat is only one part of a broader supply picture. Climate affects harvest and biomass availability. Labor affects harvesting, processing and transportation. And freight can change the economics of a material long before its FOB price changes.
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 all add volatility, and 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, 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, the author notes, 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.
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 Choose Ingredients
Growing media is often built in the opposite direction: picking what is available — peat, coir, bark, wood fiber, perlite or another familiar component — and then building 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?
Once those requirements are clear, the ingredients and percentages can be chosen to create that character. This matters because the raw-material toolbox is getting larger.
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 today. The same applies to regional agricultural residues that can be cleaned, screened, fiberized, composted or stabilized into more consistent horticultural ingredients.
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. Being available is not the same as being suitable, but suitability is increasingly something the industry can engineer.
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, and any new component needs to be trialed and validated before commercial adoption.
This is where small trials become strategic: testing an alternative wood fiber, or re-examining rice hulls, bark fractions, coir products or locally available biomass, and understanding what changes in irrigation, fertility, handling and crop performance. The goal is to build 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 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 but can offer characteristics that are difficult to reproduce with some local materials. Peat remains an important and effective growing-media component. Wood fiber and bark can contribute well where feedstock and processing are right. Other biomass streams may become increasingly useful as processing improves.
The 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 This Season as a Planning Signal
The lesson from the 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. Weather, labor, freight, tariffs and supply-chain disruptions in recent years have already shown that yesterday's dependable supply pattern is not guaranteed to remain tomorrow's.
Demand is also growing. Wageningen research projects global demand rising substantially toward 2050, which means the industry will need a broader basket of materials and more processing capacity rather than simply a different winner in the peat-versus-coir-versus-wood-fiber debate.
For growers planning 2027, the author suggests asking 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?
Flexibility is easiest to build while options are still open, rather than after a shortage makes the decision for you.
Jennifer Neujahr is the former Director of Horticulture Business for Profile Products and, along with Ted Buis, co-founder of Next Step Solutions, a growth accelerator focused on horticulture and AgTech.