Why Tuna Is Considered a Strategic Commodity for Many Countries?

When people think of strategic food commodities, they think of palm oil, rice and chicken- few think of Tuna.

But governments around the world do not invest billions into fishing fleets, processing facilities, and international fishing agreements simply because people enjoy eating it. Tuna plays a measurable role in food security, national resilience, and emergency preparedness — and for countries like Malaysia, where land is finite and agricultural expansion has real limits, that role is more significant than most people realise.

1. Armed Forces Around the World Ration It

The clearest signal that a food product is strategic is when militaries stockpile it.

Tuna meets every requirement of an ideal field ration:

1. high in protein

2. compact and portable

3. shelf-stable for several years, 5-7 years

4. safe to consume without cooking or refrigeration. No electricity required. No preparation needed.

The U.S. military purchases large quantities of shelf-stable foods through the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which procures products for military rations, commissaries, ships, overseas bases, emergency reserves, and disaster-response stockpiles. Major U.S. canned tuna brands such as Bumble Bee Foods, StarKist, and Chicken of the Sea have historically supplied products into these channels.

What holds for military logistics holds equally for civilian emergency planning. Governments responsible for disaster preparedness — floods, storms, supply chain disruptions — value shelf-stable, high-protein food for exactly the same reasons. Canned tuna can sit in a warehouse for years and still deliver nutrition the moment it is needed.

2. It Is One of the Most Traded Seafood Products on Earth

Tuna is not consumed where it is caught. A tuna hauled from the Pacific Ocean may be processed in Thailand, canned in Ecuador, and shelved in a supermarket in Europe or the Middle East. Few food products travel as far or cross as many borders.

This global supply chain has produced a multi-billion-dollar industry and made tuna one of the most internationally traded seafood commodities in the world. For coastal nations with access to tuna fishing grounds, participation in that chain — catching, processing, exporting — generates export earnings, employment, and economic resilience.

3. It Diversifies Protein Supply Away from Land

Most of the world's protein comes from land: poultry, beef, soy, pulses. All of it requires land, water, feed, and infrastructure at scale.

Malaysia has a growing population but a fixed land area shared among housing, industry, forests, and agriculture. Expanding land-based food production indefinitely is neither practical nor sustainable. Marine resources represent a parallel protein supply — one that does not compete for the same land.

Countries that draw protein from both land and sea are less exposed to shocks in either system. A drought that damages crops does not affect tuna stocks. A fishery collapse does not empty supermarket shelves of chicken. That redundancy is not incidental — it is the point of a diversified food system.

4. Diversify Risk From Global Supply Chain Disruption

Land-based protein — poultry, beef, pork — depends on global feed supply chains: soy from South America, corn from the United States, feed additives shipped across multiple borders. When those chains are disrupted, whether by geopolitical conflict, shipping bottlenecks, or export bans (such as COVID), the entire downstream industry feels it. Farmers cannot raise livestock without feed.

Tuna has no equivalent vulnerability. It is caught from the ocean, not grown from imported inputs. That independence from land-based supply chains is precisely what makes marine protein strategically valuable — not as a replacement for conventional agriculture, but as a buffer when conventional agriculture fails.

More Than a Fish

To consumers, tuna is a convenient, affordable protein. To governments, it is something more deliberate: a globally traded export commodity, a component of emergency food reserves, a military ration ingredient, and a source of protein that does not draw on scarce agricultural land.

As food security concerns grow — driven by climate variability, population growth, and geopolitical instability — the strategic value of commodities like tuna will only become more apparent.

Tuna is not merely a fish. But a “necessity” found in every supermarket and convenience store worldwide!