Commodity Index Funds & Beta

I'm a small fund manager looking to get an inflation hedge by investing in a diversified basket of commodities.

The industry has been trying to get long term beta exposure to the asset class by investing in index funds that track long only commodity indexes. However, my opinion is that this won't be an efficient beta return stream, mainly due to negative roll returns and transaction costs. Since many index funds are also carrying gross leverage of 300% or more, I am trying to understand how they manage their risk.

Am I wrong on this? How could I gain efficient long term exposure to a basket of commodities that wouldn't be exposed to the above risks?

PS. I wouldn't want equity exposure to commodity producers since that would entail its own set of problems.