Commoditize this!

REMEMBER THE SCENE in the 1983 movie ''Trading Places'' in which two condescending brokers oversimplify the commodities market for Eddie Murphy? (''Commodities are agricultural products, like... pork bellies, which are used to make bacon, which you might find in a bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwich,'' they explain, much to his offended bemusement.) In fact, thanks to multinational corporations and the governments that bend over backward to accommodate them, says James Ridgeway, veteran Washington correspondent for the Village Voice and author of the recently published ''It's All for Sale: The Control of Global Resources'' (Duke), trade of the world's commodities-fuels, metals, forests, fibers, etc.-is growing less complex all the time.

''People talk a lot about free trade, but all basic commodities are increasingly controlled by a few large international organizations, and small groups of companies, who control entire supply chains,'' Ridgeway said via email. ''So the issue of so-called free trade is a ridiculous one.''

''It's All for Sale'' backs up Ridgeway's claim. We learn, for example, that five international oil companies control the worldwide trade in petroleum, while four private corporations dominate the world trade in grain, three in timber, two in coffee, and so forth. Meanwhile, public resources never before considered commodities-drinking water, oceans, the earth's inner atmosphere, the genetic codes of plants, even human hair and body parts-are being privatized, too. So who owns what, exactly? Here's a quick primer.

DIAMONDS: The South African mining conglomerate De Beers mines half of all the world's diamonds, in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Canada, and Australia. The other half comes from Russia.

BODIES & BODY PARTS: Although it is generally held to be illegal to sell dead bodies, the business of trading cadavers and parts of cadavers to research institutions and private companies for medical research is not regulated. For arranging the transfer, brokers can get a ''facilitator'' fee-the going rate for a whole body is $1,000 and up, but specialists pay more for quality parts.

THE SKY: It might seem impossible to regulate an international commodity like the sky itself. Yet the first ''property rights'' of a sort already exist in the form of pollution credits, which allow American electrical utilities to trade rights to pollute a set amount of the atmosphere back and forth.

FRESH WATER: Estimates of the world market for drinking water are as high as $800 billion annually. More than three-quarters of the French, for example, draw water from private sources like Vivendi Universal and Suez. In the US, Pepsi and Coca-Cola have jumped into the water market in recent years.