Abstract:

The term“virtual arable land”is used to describe the area of arable land embodied in crops that are traded internationally.Taking the virtual arable land strategy in the international agricultural products trade is useful for nation to balance domestic arable land deficit，solve food security problem and give full play to comparative advantage of agricultural products.This paper introduced the method to quantify the virtual arable land at first，and then applied the method computing the virtual arable land hidden in the Chinese import and export of agricultural products.The result showed the whole country exported 1 899 083.9 hm2 and imported 1 850 1986.4 hm² virtual arable land by the international agricultural product trade in 2006.The net import virtual arable land reached at 16 602 903.1 hm²，and it occupied the 12.77% of the whole nation’s farmland.The result also showed that the net import virtual land in the last decade conform to Logistic curve equation.Based on this equation，the import amount of virtual arable land in the next years will exhibit highgrowing state.

Key words: virtual arable land/ agricultural products/ international trade