Non-Grain Production is verycommon to see in many areas in China, which threatens food security. To understand the spatio-temporal characteristics of NGP is helpful in mitigating it. This study has applied a new approach to measure the NGP rate. Results show that, the NGP rate reached the peak of 1.49 in 2003 across the 20 selected years. Moreover, the NGP rate was revealed to be higher in the north and the east compared to the south and the west. Additionally, the NGP rate is shown to move from north to south with a total of 68.78 km whenapplying the centroid migration model. The patterns of NGP are shown usingspatial heterogeneity: the high-high agglomeration pattern was revealed mainly in the north, while there are less provinces of this pattern as time goes by. In addition, the Theil index of the NGP rate indicates that the equity of NGP remains at a low level in the first ten years and getslarger and larger in the later ten years.

Ecological security is important both for maintaining the function of an ecosystem and for providing ecosystem services to the human wellbeing. The impact of land use change/cover on ecological security has attracted considerable attention, whereas the role of cropland reclamation remains unclear. The indirect loss of ecological land that occurs upon the request of cropland requisition-compensation policies offer further changes to ecological security. In order to ascertain the impact of cropland reclamation on ecological security, in this study three scenarios are established, addressing cropland returning to ecological lands without a slope limitation, with a slope <25°, and with a reclaimed cropland slope ≥25°. This study was conducted in the Yangtze River economic belt (YREB) due to its important contribution to ecological security in China. Land uses in different scenarios in 2030 are projected using the land use simulation model LANDSCAPE. Accordingly, ecological security in each scenario was evaluated using the contribution–vigour–organization–resilience framework, comprising the variables carbon storage, water purification, water yield, habitat quality, net primary productivity, mean patch area, Shannon’s diversity index, largest patch index and contagion, as well as the normalized difference vegetation index. The results indicate that about 62% of YREB land is projected to remain stable in terms of ecological security, while about 21% will deteriorate and 17% will improve between 2015–2030. Land where ecological security is projected to improve is concentrated in areas where broad and connected croplands are distributed. The fact that a higher proportion of areas will deteriorate than improve suggests that the negative impact of cropland change on ecological security should not be ignored. Comparing different scenarios, croplands returning to ecological lands pose a particularly significant impact on ecological security, particularly in the upper reaches of the YREB, where steep croplands are concentrated.