Grain Futures Prices Drop

The possibility that European crops may have escaped serious damage from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster sent grain futures prices into a steep decline Thursday on the Chicago Board of Trade. The soybean complex also was substantially lower.

Prices already were under pressure because of favorable rains over much of the nation’s midsection and more moisture in the forecast. Then came word that the Soviet ambassador to Great Britain, Leonid M. Zamyatin, said his country would need no additional grain because of the Chernobyl accident.

This report circulated widely on the trading floor and did a lot of damage to wheat and corn prices, said Dale Gustafson, an analyst in Chicago with Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Zamyatin was quoted as saying in London that the land outside the 38-mile zone around the reactor is not contaminated and that water supplies in the area had not received dangerous amounts of radioactivity.

A little later, the soybean complex was undercut by a report from Washington that the White House had restricted imports from the European Economic Community, prompting fears of retaliation against American soy products.