This paper has revealed the characteristics of arable-land resources and utilization, the basic process and regional difference of change in arable-land area according to the statistics data of arable-land area during the past 20 odd years of the reform and opening to the outside world and detailed-investigation of land use during the recent five years. Also, the driving mechanism for the changes in the cultivated land area is discussed. The main conclusions are shown below: (1) There is a trend of obvious fluctuant decrease in arable-land area during the past 20 odd years. The changes of arable-land undergo the process from gently decrease to steep decrease to slow decrease. During the process, there are three height periods of decrease in arable-land; round about 1985, 1987 to 1990 and 1991 to 1993 respectively. (2) The decreased arable-land is mainly inverted to project and mine land, residential area, all kinds of traffic lands and orchard. The increased arable-land mainly comes from exploitation and reclamation of non-utilized land and arrangement and resuming of project and mine land. (3) The economic development, population growth and policy are the dominant macro-driving factors in decrease of cultivated land area in Yantai. The obvious break during the change process of arable-land is related to the national macro-policies. The rapid decrease of cultivated land area coincided in time with the overheated economic growth resulting from the direct investment in fixed assets. Spatial distribution of the decrease in arable-land matched the differences in speed and scale pf economic growth between different regions of Yantai area. .Furthermore, the decrease in arable-land because of population increase cannot be ignored.