US plans to start buying grain blocked from USSR

The United States will soon start buying its own grain that was blocked from export to the Soviet Union after Moscow's intervention in Afghanistan, the Agriculture Department said Tuesday.

It said the government's Commodity Credit Corporation would begin offering on Friday to buy as much as 4.5 million tons of wheat and by mid- March would start buying up to 10.8 million tons of corn. This represents nearly all the grain barred from shipment in President Carter's announcement two months ago as part of punitive measures against the Soviet Union.