Abstract: The food security is closely related to cultivated land protection. With the acceleration of new urbanization in the central plains, occupancy of cultivated land for construction and development will continue and is difficult to slow down in short term. The contradiction between people and land will further exacerbate, the pressure of cultivated land protection will increase further. To strengthen surveillance research of the quantity and quality of cultivated land is significant to improve the management and protection of regional cultivated land. Taking Jiyuan City as an example, the TM images and land distribution map of 2009 and 2012 were overlaid. Based on the extracted vegetation index (NDVI) and comparison analysis of it, the average yield differences, spatial distribution of cultivated land quality and temporal and spatial changes of cultivated land quality of multi-years in the study area were obtained. The results showed that the quality of cultivated land in Jiyuan City was good on the whole. The high-yielding fields were mainly distributed around the east of the city; the low-yielding fields were mainly located in the western mountains. Good quality arable land accounted for 53.56%, and the poor-quality arable land accounted for 13.61%. The features of temporal and spatial changes of cultivated land from 2009 to 2012 included the westward distribution of cultivated land, the decline of regional cultivated land quality, the occupancy of eastern part of high quality cultivated land and the distribution of low quality supplements mainly in midwest. The relationship between new urbanization and cultivated land protection should be considered in cultivated land protection. The transformation from the quantity balance and management to the quantity, quality and ecological comprehensive balance and control was to ensure the dynamic equilibrium of the total arable land in the region.