Abstract: The processes of industrialization and urbanization have important influence on quantity variation of cultivated land,but they differed. Based on the annual statistics of agricultural land in Chuzhou from 1975 to 2005,analysis was carried out of the difference between industrialization and urbanization in effect on quantity variation of cultivated land using a vector autoregression model and the impulse response function and the variance decomposition methods. Results show that quantity variation of cultivated land,industrialization degree and urbanization degree are non-stationary. Industrialization affects negatively the quantity variation rate of cultivated land,while urbanization does positively. And the effect of the former is greater than the latter and lasts longer as well,which suggests that urbanization is the principal factor,triggering the variation in the fast developing period of Chuzhou City. In view of the unbalanced development of industrialization and urbanization,it is of great significance to conservation of cultivated land to rationalize the urbanization process and improve the integrated quality of urbanization.