Cropland: Surplus or Deficit? From the Perspective of Meeting People’s Grain Requirement

The quantity and quality of cropland plays an important role in ensuring food security. In order to explore spatiotemporal patterns of the extent to which cropland satisfies people’s grain need, we integrate multi-source heterogeneous data to investigate in which era, and in which region, the cultivated land can meet people’s food demands. It turns out that in the past 30 years, with the exception of the late 1980s, the amount of cropland could satisfy people’s grain needs at the nation scale. However, more than 10 provinces (municipality/autonomous region), mainly located in western China and southeast coastal areas, have been unable to meet the grain needs of local people. We projected the guarantee rate to the late 2020s. Our study concludes that the guarantee rate of cropland is estimated to be higher than 150% in China. Compared to 2019, except Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, Jilin, Ningxia, as well as Heilongjiang in the Sustainability scenario, and Shanghai in the Sustainability and the Equality scenarios, the guarantee rate of cultivated land will increase in every province (municipality/autonomous region) in 2030. This study has reference value for the study of China’s cultivated land protection system, as well as important significance for China’s sustainable development.