Abstract: Cultivated land resources，as parts of important natural resources，are the bases of existence and development of human society，which are also factors to the sustainable development of society. With the fast economic development and increasing population in China，the relationship between cultivated land resources and sustainable development of society is becoming more intensive. At the background of maintaining sustainable socio-economic development，using Ecological Footprint theory，the paper calculated the best capacity of cultivated land resources of Gansu province in from 1997 to 2009. And using the ARIMA model，it predicted the ecological footprint and ecological capacity of Gansu Province from 2010 to 2015. According to the socio-economic indicators in the 12th Five-Year Plan of Gansu Province，it gave a scenarios prediction of the sustainable capacity of cultivated land. The results showed as follows：（1）from 1997 to 2009，the per capita ecological footprints in Gansu province increased year by year. The total increased 0.986 2 hm2 with the annual average growth rate of 4.2%；from 1997 to 2004，per capita ecological capacity decreased year by year，and then turned to increase，the total changed modestly，and the total of per capita ecological deficit increased 0.988 3 hm2 with the annual average growth rate of 6.08%；（2）from 1997 to 2009，the total of per capita cultivated land ecological footprint in Gansu Province increased 0.033 7 hm2，with the annual average growth rate of 1.76%; from 1997 to 2004，per capita cultivated land ecological capacity decreased year by year，and then turned to increase，but little changed in total; per capita cultivated land ecological deficit was positive，which was said ecological redundancy，but it reduced year by year；（3）from 1997 to 2009，the sustainable development of cultivated land was on the rise generally. From 1997 to 2002，it was lower than the actual cultivated land area in addition to 1998，and from 2003 to 2009，the sustainable development of cultivated land was higher than the actual cultivated land area，and a negative load factor of cultivated land was identified；（4）the predictive results of ARIMA model showed that，the per capita ecological footprint of Gansu Province would be on the rise from 2010 to 2015，which would be expected to increase to 2.6051 hm2 in 2015；the per capita ecological capacity would grow slowly and it would be still less than the per capita ecological footprint，which resulting in ecological deficit with an increasing trend，the ecological environment of Gansu Province would be unsustainable；the per capita cultivate land ecological footprint would be on the rise，with the average annual growth rate of 4.75%；the per capita cultivate land ecological capacity would show a decreasing trend，but little change in total，from 2011 the per capita cultivate land ecological deficit would be negative，and increase year by year；（5）from 2010 to 2015，the scenarios prediction showed that the sustainable capacity of cultivated land of Gansu province would be higher than the actual cultivated land area，its gap would be widening，and it would be 2.42 times more than the actual cultivated land area in 2015；the negative load factor of cultivated land would be more seriously，the relationship between the cultivated land resources and the sustainable development of society would be more and more intensive.

Key words: ecological footprint, ecological capacity, cultivated land resources, sustainable development capacity, scenarios prediction