Taking corruption out of the equation, and getting desperate, hungry people fed.

It sounds simple on the news. Emergency aid being flown in to Ghana or Bangladesh after their recent flood, mudslide or earthquake.
It's nice to hear they're being taken care of, but could it be done more efficiently?

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Let's consider some of the logistical difficulties involved, particularly if roads are unavailable.

Sourcing and/or storing food of high nutritional value, which is fresh, easily prepared on the ground and culturally acceptable, usually with no prior warning.

Loading that food onto a big plane, flying to a remote airstrip, landing and unloading the food, while avoiding other planes doing the same thing, with no local air traffic control.

Making sure that the food is distributed far and wide, to the people with the least access to food (usually the people furthest from the airport), and not stockpiled and sold by corrupt, local 'authorities'.

One popular solution is the airdrop, which solves a lot of these issues, but causes a few more.

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It requires specialised equipment which is difficult, if impossible to recover for reuse, and aid can land poorly, on rocks or trees, damaging the delivery, or making it difficult to access.

It's also still delivered to one location, so opportunistic individuals with vehicles and guns can typically arrive on the scene first, and sell the food to its intended beneficiaries, often using the proceeds to buy more guns.

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It would be far better to just drop thousands of live chickens from planes

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Hens can be farmed in the millions, in specially quarantined areas, (possibly even small islands without predators), and spend their whole lives on standby, ready to be ushered onto a cargo plane as an emergency food supply in cases of natural disaster.

The plane can be equipped with multiple, smooth floors, each loaded and released separately.
The pilot could fly low over an affected area, open one or more rear doors, and go into a quick climb.
The chickens would slide out the back and into the open air.
They can't initiate flight, but most of them would flap to the ground without injury.
They can then be caught and used by the locals in whatever way best suits their needs.
Those not immediately required as food would be kept for eggs.

Now think of the logistical issues this resolves.

There's no requirement to keep perishable food on standby, or source it in bulk at short notice.
There's no discarded packaging/plastic left on the ground after the disaster.
Loading the plane requires no heavy equipment or man power, just a few ramps and experienced chicken wranglers.
No expensive, single use parachutes, and no crew required in the aircraft, which doesn't need to land in the disaster zone.
The food is already distributed by the time it lands, undamaged, with no risk to structures or people; so the thugs with the vehicles and the guns might be able to catch a few each, but they can't control the supply.

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None of the major religious or cultural groups has any issue with eating chicken.

Chicken can be cooked many ways, even roasted over a fire if no clean water is available

Livestock may have been washed away in a flood, but chickens float nicely.

It's permission-less. They can be dropped on areas where starvation is being used as a political weapon, and nobody can stop it from happening

Now I absolutely understand if this raises some questions around chicken welfare, and I certainly don't want any unnecessary chicken-suffering.

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First, I'd like to suggest that multiple farms/runways, spread around the world, would mean that many chickens would live a happy, pampered, predator free life, and die of natural causes, without ever being conscripted as reluctant paratroopers.

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Second, while it may seem cruel to drop them from a plane into the sky, we need to remember; they are birds.

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Third, they should only be enlisted when people are in dire need of quick protein; even as a quick stop-gap until more traditional aid arrives.

But enough from me. What do you think?