According to the statistics of cultivated land in Yantai area during the Reform and Opening-up over the past 20years and with the detailed survey and changing data of land use during the recent five years, this paper reveals the basic characteristics of the resource utilization, the basic process of the changes, regional differences, and current direction of cultivated land. In addition, this paper makes a preliminary research on the major driving factors and the influence mechanism for the changes in the cultivated land area, and reaches the following conclusions: (1) There was a trend of obvious fluctuant decrease in cultivated land area during the past 20 years. The changes of cultivated land have undergone the process - slow decrease, steep decrease, slow decrease. And there were three peak periods of cultivated land loss around 1985, 1987-1990and 1991-1993 respectively. (2) The decreased cultivated land was mainly converted into land for industry and mining,residential area, and all kinds of traffic and orchards. The increase of cultivated land mainly came from exploitation and reclamation of non-utilized land and arrangement and reclamation of industry and mining land. (3) The economic development,population growth and policy are the dominant macro-driving factors for the decrease of cultivated land area in Yantai. The obvious sudden changes during the change process of cultivated land acreage are relevant to the national macro-policies background. The rapid decrease of cultivated land area is synchronous with the overheated economic growth resulting from the direct investment infixed assets. Spatial distribution of the decrease in cultivated land is congruous with the differences in speed and the scale of economic growth between the different regions of Yantai area. Furthermore, the decrease in cultivated land caused by population increase cannot be ignored.