Punjab levies a market fee and a rural development cess on grain sold in its regulated mandis, together several per cent of the value, and the arhtiya takes a commission on top.
Those levies are a significant part of the state's own tax revenue and they fund the rural link roads and market infrastructure.
That gives the state government a direct financial interest in the continuation of the procurement system in its present form, which is a fact usually left out of the argument about farm marketing reform.
The 2020 farm laws would have allowed trade outside the mandi yards and therefore outside the levies, which is why the state government opposed them alongside the farm unions but not entirely for the same reasons.
Punjab's rural roads are among the best in India and they were paid for out of a fee on wheat and paddy.
Everything in Punjab's agricultural economy is connected to everything else, which is why single-issue reform proposals keep failing here.
The arhtiya takes his commission but he is not only a broker. He advances money against the standing crop, settles the account at harvest, and across much of the Malwa he is the credit a bank will not extend. The commission is the visible part of a relationship that is mostly lending.
Punjab has more regulated yards for the area than any other state and a purchase centre within a short distance of nearly every village. That is why procurement works here and does not work in states that never built the yards, and it took thirty years and a great deal of money to build.
The Food Corporation buys, the state agencies buy on its behalf, the state takes its fee, the agent takes his commission, the labour is engaged through a contractor, the gunny is a separate contract and the transport is a separate trade again. Something like a dozen parties stand between a field and a warehouse and all of them are paid out of the same grain.