[Objective] The main grain producing areas have an important strategic position in achieving stable grain production and supply. The cultivated land use efficiency and its spatiotemporal evolution characteristics in the main grain producing areas were studied to promoting the efficient use of cultivated land resources in the main grain producing areas, and ensuring food security and realizing sustainable agricultural development.[Methods] The two-stage dynamic network DEA model was innovatively used to measure cultivated land utilization efficiency of 179 prefecture-level cities in the main grain producing area from 2010 to 2020. The spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of cultivated land use efficiency were analyzed by ArcGIS visualization technology and kernel density estimation. The Tobit model was constructed to explore the influencing factors of cultivated land utilization efficiency.[Results] The overall efficiency level of the main grain producing area from 2010 to 2020 was characterized as "small decline-rapid rise-fluctuating growth", and the overall efficiency level was low and still had great capacity for improvement. The efficiency level of the production stage was always higher than that of the consumption stage. The gap between the efficiency levels of the two stages had a tendency to further increase. The increase in cultivated land utilization efficiency in the main grain producing area was influenced by the combined effect of the efficiency levels during the two stages, with the production stage being the main driver of efficiency improvement. Resistance to improvement came from the efficiency during the consumption stage. By region, cultivated land utilization efficiency followed the order of Songhua River basin>Yangtze River basin>Yellow River basin, with significant regional imbalance. From the spatial point of view, the overall efficiency and high value areas of production stage efficiency were spatially distributed from northeast to southwest, and gradually formed a spatial pattern of "high-high" clustering and "low-low" clustering. The high value areas of consumption stage efficiency showed a discrete distribution pattern, and did not show the development trend of convergence in the direction of improvement. The external influencing factors of the overall, production, and consumption stages were different, involving the level of socio-economic development, urban and rural development, science and technology, and agricultural infrastructure construction. There were significant differences in the intensity and direction of different factors on the overall and sub-stage cultivated land use efficiency in different regions.[Conclusion] In the future, the main grain producing areas should not only explore the path of regional differentiated cultivated land use, strengthen cooperation among prefecture-level cities, but also focus on the convergence speed of efficiency improvement in consumption stage and the coordination with the efficiency gap in production stage while improving the efficiency of production stage.