Ask a screen what a commodity costs and it gives you one number. Ask the forward curve and it gives you the market's entire opinion: how tight supply is right now, what storage is worth, and how badly someone needs the physical today rather than in six months. Contango and backwardation are just the two shapes that opinion takes.
Contango means the forward price sits above spot: each later delivery month costs more than the one before it. Backwardation is the reverse: spot trades above the forwards, and the curve slopes down. Every physical desk decision that touches storage, freight timing, or hedging inherits its economics from which of these two states the curve is in.
