DICK Smith continues to spread the word about the need to buy food grown and produced in Australia.

And on Saturday he brought the message to Tasmania, where he announced his newest project: Jam made from the state's best raspberries and blackberries.

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Mr Smith, with an entourage comprising his wife, grandkids and business and media team, piled into a people mover at Hobart airport and drove to Richard Clark's raspberry farm at Westerway in the Derwent Valley.

His new products, called Dick Smith's Magnificent Australian Grown Raspberry and Blackberry Jams, are sourced from the farm and will soon find their way on to supermarket shelves around the nation.

Mr Smith says they are "as Australian as you can get".

"When I was young, I used to come here on bushwalking holidays," he said. "I picked blackberries from over the fence at a farm very like this one."

Mr Smith groaned with delight swallowing the large blackberries and raspberries offered to him by Mr Clark yesterday.

Mr Clark, 28, an economist with the Reserve Bank of Australia, contacted Mr Smith after seeing him on the TV show A Current Affair.

In a last-ditch attempt to persuade Aussies to buy Australian produce, Mr Smith has started an online grocery story.

On the website customers will be able to click on the barcode of a product, which will point to a video of the farmer who grew the product.

Mr Clark grew 45.5 tonnes of raspberries on 25ha last season. Next year he will supply Dick Smith Foods with 48 tonnes of raspberries and a smaller amount of blackberries.

Mr Smith said the jams were a fightback against three million jars of the French fruit spread St Dalfour sold in supermarkets last year.

He has a contract with Woolworths to sell his jams, but not with Coles, which he says wants a bigger profit margin. " I hope Coles supports our farmers and offers a reasonable price," he said.

Mr Smith, who started his Dick Smith food line 12 years ago, said 80 per cent of food sold in major Australian supermarkets was from overseas.

"I've done very well out of Australia so I have an obligation to help Australian farms," he said.

"Tasmania grows the best raspberries. We grow the best food. We just have to convince shoppers to pay a little bit extra and buy it.

"Remember the corner shop in the 1950s selling blackberries? They were grown locally."

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