Media reports suggest that about 11,000 cartons of table grapes from Chile are on the way to Australia.

Nobody seems to know which retailer has bought them.

Prime suspect, Coles, says it is not them.

Mildura district irrigators are angry. About 95 percent of Australia’s table grapes are grown in and around Mildura.

Growers have no complaint about grapes being imported from California during our winter and spring months when they are out of season here.

But Chile has the same seasons as Australia and the arrival of their  grapes here in autumn will cut into the market on which local growers depend.

* * *

Chile produces about 8 times as big an annual grape crop as Australia. Do they have it in mind to undercut and destroy the Australian table grape industry altogether?

Their product is arguably inferior to our local fruit . . . .

By the time it’s in the shops it will have been treated with both methyl bromide and sulphur dioxide — whereas Australian grapes will be fresh from the vine.

No matter how cheap imported Chilean grapes may sell, they come at an unnecessary cost to the environment.

Why waste all that jet fuel or diesel or whatever sending grapes across the ocean to a country that already grows grapes at least as good?

* * *

Why not put a tax on imported grapes, making them so costly that nobody will buy them?

Will Australians make a decision to support local industry — refusing to buy imports no matter how cheap they are?

When we learn which shop is selling Chilean grapes, why not stay away and buy nothing from them for a while?