LIVE CATTLE RALLY AS LOCKOUT AT MEAT PLANT ENDS

  Live cattle futures posted a robust
  rally today after a major beef packing company said it would
  end a lockout at its slaughtering plant in Dakota City, Neb.
      April delivery cattle on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
  closed at 64.45 cents a pound, up 0.83 cent, as the market
  expected demand for live animals to increase as the plant
  restarts operations.
      Iowa Beef Processors, a division of Occidental Petroleum,
  said it planned to reopen the plant, one of the largest in the
  nation, on March 16. The plant has been closed since Dec. 14,
  the day after a contract between IBP and Local 222 of the
  United Food and Commercial Workers Union expired.
      The plant employs 2,800 workers and can slaughter several
  thousand animals a day, a company spokesman said.
      The company said it locked out union workers because they
  threatened to disrupt operations. It was unclear whether union
  meatpackers would return to work. They rejected the company's
  latest contract offer March 5.
      Traders said cattle prices advanced at midsession as rumors
  circulated that the lockout was ending, and gains were further
  fueled by a noticeable increase in demand for live animals on
  cash markets in Nebraska and the Texas Panhandle.
      The rally in cattle also boosted values of live hogs and
  frozen pork bellies, which also were supported by indications
  that producers were expanding their hog herds at a slower rate
  than previously expected.
      Petroleum futures posted a modest rally on the New York
  Mercantile Exchange.
      But a report that the Soviet Union planned to reduce the
  price of its crude oil exports may pressure the market Friday,
  said Nauman Barakat, petroleum analyst in New York with Smith
  Barney, Harris Upham and Co.
      Buying by companies that deal in petroleum helped prices
  recover from early weakness, traders said.
      Gold futures rallied, partly in response to strength in the
  silver market, on the Commodity Exchange in New York. Silver
  prices rallied after a U.S. brokerage house recommended its
  customers buy the metal, traders said.
      Coffee futures drifted lower in response to a report that
  Colombia lowered the price of its exports, traders said.
      Sugar prices closed slightly higher on the Coffee, Sugar
  and Cocoa Exchange despite a large export sale by the European
  Commission on Wednesday.
      Soybeans were higher, wheat lower and corn mixed on the
  Chicago Board of Trade.
      Soybeans were boosted by expectations that the Agriculture
  Department would report a healthy signup for the Conservation
  Reserve Program, which pays farmers to leave highly erodible
  land idle instead of planting a crop, traders said.
      Concern that a strike by Brazilian seamen might interrupt
  exports of soybeans from Brazil, where the harvest is just
  beginning, also underpinned prices, they said.
      Wheat prices were pressured by selling in response to
  trends on price charts, they said.
  

