When the Razoni left Odesa at the start of this month, the first ship to sail from Ukraine with a cargo of food since Russia’s full-scale invasion was hailed by UN secretary-general António Guterres as carrying two commodities in short supply — “corn, and hope”.
But the world’s most closely monitored vessel has since proved an imperfect symbol of the path towards solving the global food crisis.
After navigating through the mines in and around the Ukrainian Black Sea ports, the Razoni never arrived at its originally stated destination, Tripoli in Lebanon. The shipment’s buyer rejected the 26,500 tonne corn cargo on quality grounds and the vessel remained stranded until new buyers were found and 1,500 tonnes of the grain was unloaded in Turkey.