Build Flexibility Into Your Growing Media Strategy

The latest Canadian peat extraction numbers deserve growers’ attention — but not panic. The Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association (CSPMA)’s Sept. 17 report, covering conditions through Aug. 31, shows substantial regional variation. 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. Just as important, the association says careful inventory management should allow producers to meet customer needs. That distinction matters. This is not a call to declare a peat shortage.

It is, however, another reminder that an agricultural raw material harvested outdoors will never be completely insulated from weather. CSPMA’s “expected extraction” also 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.

The more useful question for growers is therefore not, “Will we run out of peat?” It is, “How resilient is my growing-media strategy when one of the materials I depend on 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 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 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 been making a similar point from the broader grower-cost perspective. In a recent Greenhouse Grower interview (which you can find here), 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 we think growers should stop treating raw-material selection as a once-a-year purchasing exercise. It is becoming a risk-management and production-design decision.

Start With Character, Then Back Into Ingredients

We often build growing media in the opposite direction from the way I believe we should. We start with what is available — peat, coir, bark, wood fiber, perlite or another familiar component — and then build 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, then back into the ingredients and percentages that can 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 we can engineer.

Revisit the Materials You 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 is true of regional agricultural residues that can be cleaned, screened, fiberized, composted, stabilized, or otherwise processed into more consistent horticultural ingredients.

I am not suggesting growers replace a proven substrate because something new is available. I am suggesting they know what else is out there before they need it.

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.

We are seeing more growers and growing-media companies take a fresh look at their entire raw-material program —  not because something is necessarily wrong today, but because they want to understand what else is available, what it would really cost delivered, and whether another combination of materials could give them the same or better crop performance with less supply risk.

This is where small trials become 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. Build the knowledge before a supply disruption forces the decision.

Local and Global Should not be an Either/or Decision

There is understandable interest in sourcing closer to home. 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 our raw materials can change quickly, while crops still have to be produced on schedule.

Our industry has had enough reminders over the last several 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, I would use this season as a reason to ask 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?

Do not wait for a shortage to learn how another raw material behaves. The best time to build flexibility into a growing-media program is while you still have choices.