Questioning Broker Fees and Commodity Liquidity

Anyone else finding the landscape for commodity brokerages increasingly...dense, shall we say? I've been running numbers on a few different setups lately, particularly looking at the spreads on some of the less liquid agricultural contracts – corn, especially, given the current geopolitical landscape. It seems like the 'headline' commission rates are one thing, but once you factor in slippage on anything beyond the most vanilla instruments, and then the various funding costs for holding positions, the real carry can just eat into your edge.

It's not just the explicit fees either. I've been doing a bit of digging into the payout reliability with a couple of the newer, more tech-forward platforms. Promises of instant settlement are great, but when you're moving significant capital, 'instant' often translates to 'tomorrow if you're lucky and the stars align.' There's a certain comfort in the old guard, even with their clunkier interfaces, simply because you know your funds aren't going to get stuck in some ether. Just wondering if anyone has found a sweet spot for infrastructure that balances competitive pricing with rock-solid operational reliability, especially when playing in commodity futures that aren't $WTI or $GC.