Abstract: Farmers'' preference for the investment in cultivated land is related to the sustainable utilization of cultivated land and food security. [Method]By using the participatory rural appraisal method, a random questionnaire survey was conducted among 512 farmers of five pairs typical suburban and outer suburb villages in Yunnan Province, and then made a quantitative comparative analysis on the differences in the preference for investment in cultivated land of farmers between suburban and outer suburb villages. [Result]The results show that: whether it was labor, machinery, capital and the total investment, the suburban villages were obviously lower than the outer suburb villages in the average investment for each farmer, but the suburban villages were larger than the outer suburb villages in the average investment for each cultivated land. In the investment structure of cultivated land in the suburban and outer suburb villages, the labor investment occupy the vast majority, and farmers of the suburban villages had stronger preference for labor investment but weaker preference for capital investment than the outer suburb villages, and the use intensity of cultivated land of suburban villages were higher than that of outer suburb villages. For the further willingness of investment in cultivated land, most farmers remained unchanged, but farmers generally tend to reduce the amount of labor investment and increase the capital investment in cultivated land, and the outer suburb villages are more prominent than the suburban villages. Farmers generally tend to reduce investment in good-quality cultivated land and reduce investment in poor-quality cultivated land, and the outer suburb villages are more prominent than the suburban villages. [Conclusion]In order to achieve the scale and sustainable investment of cultivated land as early as possible, measures should be taken as soon as possible to promote the smooth transfer of cultivated land and expand the scale of transfer especially in the outer suburb villages.