In response to continuing and massive environmental degredation in rural Australia, the National Landcare Program has been developed to promote self-help, cooperative action among local "communities of interest." Landcare is predicated on two dimensions of cultural change. First, rural land users must develop more communitarian approaches to land management, allowing their individual interests to be subsumed within the ecological and economic interests of this wider community; second, understandings of good farming practices must be developed that are ecologically sensitive and resilient. This article examines the extent of change along these dimensions and contends that while arguably profound cultural transformations have taken place, the contradictory imperatives placed on land users by Landcare and the economic rationalist turn in state policy result in ambiguous environmental outcomes.

Keywords: Landcare, land degredation, state policy, rural culture; Australia