There is greater adoption of land management practices in the last three years including managing effluent storage, restricting stock from waterways and managing soil compaction and pugging, the fourth biennial Survey of Rural Decision Makers, run by Landcare Research scientists, found.
Riparian planting increased slightly relative to 2015.
More than 3700 people responded last spring. Respondents include both lifestyle and commercial farmers, foresters and growers.
The survey featured new questions to reflect emerging primary sector issues such as farm-level biosecurity and climate change.
The results show more dairy farmers and growers intended to intensify their operations in 2019 than in 2017 with one in seven dairy farmers and one in five growers planning to intensify in the next two years.
The dairy, arable and deer industries had the lowest numbers with no farm environment plans while 50-84% of sheep and beef, grazing, horticulture, forestry and viticulture had no plans.
All sectors said biosecurity will be increasingly important over the next five years relative to the past five years.
That is especially so for dairy farmers and fruit and nut growers, consistent with increased awareness of Mycoplasma bovis, brown marmorated stink bug and other emerging threats.
Most respondents believe climate change is already affecting New Zealand.
About 75% of them expect the frequency or intensity of droughts, heat waves, floods and storms to increase.
There was an increase across the board of management practices to mitigate climate change effects, such as changing stocking rates, planting native trees, increasing feed reserves, changing stock breeds, investing in infrastructure to stop flooding and increasing water storage.
For erosion control 58-69% have done work ranging from tree planting on slopes, riparian planting, retiring land and maintaining sediment traps.
The survey found 81% of respondents had excluded stock from major waterways and 66% from minor waterways.
Almost all dairy farmers, 55-60% of sheep, beef and deer farmers, 65% of graziers and 80% of arable farmers have fenced major waterways.
