Prices on Foodstuffs Mixed

The disaster at Chernobyl remains the dominant influence among traders of American agricultural futures.

There were no big price movements in most of these commodities Friday, but that’s the point.

With the news of the fire in the Chernobyl reactor being out, the expectation was that grain futures markets, supersensitive to worldwide supply and demand factors, would nose dive from Thursday’s strong run-up. The theory was that with the fire out, there was an end in sight to the spread of radioactive contamination on Eastern European farms.

But there was no nose dive. Prices for grains, soybeans, livestock and meat futures were mixed, leaning to the firm side.

Last week, after two days of strong advances on the first word of the Chernobyl accident, there was a broad retreat in prices on the theory that traders had overreacted.

This week it was different, and Thursday’s gains, based mainly on a rumor that the Soviet Union is out to buy huge amounts of foodstuffs, held quite well.

“The demand potential for American food products is hopeful, if contamination is as widespread as it seems,” said Philip Stanley, a livestock analyst in Chicago with Thomson McKinnon Securities.