Short answers, pulled from the story.
In economics, a commodity is an economic good with full or substantial fungibility, meaning the market treats instances of the good as equivalent regardless of who produced them. Raw materials such as iron ore, wheat, crude oil, and gold are classic examples. The price of a commodity is determined by its market as a whole rather than by individual producer reputation.
Soft commodities are goods that are grown, such as wheat and rice. Hard commodities are mined, with examples including gold, silver, helium, and oil. Energy commodities such as electricity, gas, coal, and oil form a third category; electricity is especially distinct because it is usually uneconomical to store and must be consumed as soon as it is produced.
Karl Marx defined socially necessary labour time as the average amount of time that society at large requires to produce a given commodity. He argued this average, not the time of any individual skilled or unskilled worker, is the correct basis for the exchange value of a commodity. This concept was his resolution to an earlier problem that had troubled Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow.
Commoditization is the process by which goods that once commanded premium profit margins lose their differentiation across the supply base and become interchangeable with competitors' products. Generic pharmaceuticals and DRAM chips are well-documented examples. A New York Times article also cited multivitamin supplements: a 50 mg tablet of calcium is of equal value to a consumer no matter which company produces it.
Commodity super cycles are periods of roughly a decade during which commodities as a whole trade above their long-term moving average price, driven by large industrial or commercial shifts. There have been four such cycles over the last 120 years. The first began in late 1890, peaking in 1917; the second peaked in 1951; the third arose in the 1970s; and the fourth began in 2000 when China joined the World Trade Organization.
The word commodity entered English in the 15th century from the French commodité, meaning amenity or convenience. The French term derived from the Latin commoditas, meaning suitability, convenience, and advantage, which in turn came from the Latin commodus, also the root of the English words commodious and accommodate.