Commodities : Grain Futures Up Strongly

Grain futures prices registered healthy advances Friday on the belief--not entirely fulfilled--that the government was about to take strong action to improve commodity exports.

Wheat gained about 5 cents a bushel and corn was up as much as 7 cents at the Chicago Board of Trade.

In other markets, coffee futures plunged sharply, livestock and meat were higher and oil advanced in dull trading.

Grain and soybean futures had opened lower at the Board of Trade on improved weather conditions in the South, but the grains shot ahead in late morning on a report that Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng was going to make an important announcement after the close.

The belief among traders was that the export bonus program, a subsidy that in effect lowers the price to selected foreign buyers, was going to be expanded to include grain sold to China and the Soviet Union.

Instead, Lyng said the United States would subsidize wheat sales to the Soviets to bring the price down to the current world market price. This would only extend to about 4 1/2 million metric tons of wheat the Soviets already had promised to buy this year under a long-term grain deal.