The legacy report lumped everyone hedging anything into "commercial", which by the 2000s included swap dealers laying off index fund exposure — a group with nothing in common with a grain elevator. The disaggregated report, introduced in 2009, separates producers and merchants, swap-dealer, managed-money and other reportables.
For physical commodities the disaggregated version is the one to read. Financial futures use a parallel Traders in Financial Futures report with dealer, asset manager, leveraged funds and other categories.
Example: a legacy report showing commercials net short 400,000 corn contracts may disaggregate into producers and merchants short 260,000 and swap dealers short 140,000 — two groups with entirely different motives behind one number.
Related: commitments-of-traders, swap-dealer, managed-money, commercial-trader, non-commercial-trader