Since 2004, China has significantly increased its grain production due to the impetus of strong policy support from the government, including soil testing and fertilizer recommendation. This paper analyzes the changes in fertilizer efficiency in China's grain production systems by comparing the farmers' practice in 2008 and 2001. In the period investigated, chemical fertilizer application rate increased by 5.4% and 29.0% in wheat and maize production, respectively, and decreased by 4.3% in rice cultivation. Total fertilizer consumption increased by 1.3 * 10 6 t on grain crops, but its proportion decreased from 68% to 50% in the total chemical fertilizer consumption of the country. PFP (partial factor productivity, i.e. grain yield divided by the amount fertilizer), used to represent the fertilizer use efficiency of rice, was higher than that of wheat and maize. The PFP of wheat and rice increased from 10.6 kg/kg to 11.9 kg/kg and from 13.9 kg/kg to 15.7 kg/kg, respectively, and that of maize decreased from 13.8 kg/kg to 11.5 kg/kg. The change of planting structure had a strong impact on fertilizer application. The concentration of the production of main cereal crops to the areas with advantageous conditions is believed to be good to the improvement of fertilizer efficiency of cereal crops. On the other hand,the continuous increase in the cultivation area of economic crops will bring additional variables to the changing trend of fertilizer efficiency in China.
