The dairy industry contributes significantly to our country's economy, accounting for 4% of the GDP and providing income and livelihood to millions. Currently, over 2 million individuals are employed across the dairy value chain, predominantly among smallholder farmers. These farmers rely on local milk collection centers, which typically record milk delivery transactions manually in hardcopy inventory files. Unfortunately, these records are vulnerable to tampering and deletion, enabling collection centers to manipulate payments to farmers. This project explores the potential of blockchain technology to enhance transparency, trust, and fairness in the milk delivery process for smallholder farmers in rural areas of developing nations. Our objective is to design a farmer-centric blockchain-based platform that safeguards farmers against unscrupulous middlemen who exploit their lack of education and awareness. In the traditional system, farmers sell their milk to third-party brokers or staff from the Integrated Dairy Association (IDA), who log each delivery in manual reports or spreadsheets on centralized servers. Due to the low literacy levels of many farmers, brokers often alter these records, resulting in reduced payments and financial losses for the farmers. To address these issues, we propose migrating inventory management to a blockchain-based server, which offers immutable data storage, ensuring that records cannot be modified after they are entered. Blockchain operates on a decentralized network that stores data across multiple nodes; if one node fails, data can still be retrieved from other operational nodes. Each record is stored as a block or transaction, linked by a hash code, with new blocks only added after verifying the integrity of existing ones. Consequently, data alteration becomes impossible. By implementing blockchain technology, we aim to protect farmers from financial exploitation by brokers, ensuring fair payments for their milk deliveries.

Milk delivery platform, Blockchain technology, Fair payment.