Abstract: Trade-offs in cultivated land multifunctionality are central to understanding how cultivated land protection can move beyond single-purpose food production toward coordinated land-system governance. This study reviewed existing research on cultivated land multifunctionality trade-offs and developed an integrated framework covering conceptual interpretation, identification and measurement, driving mechanisms, and governance pathways. Literature related to agricultural multifunctionality, land-use multifunctionality, ecosystem services, landscape functions, cultivated land protection, and territorial spatial governance was examined. Existing studies were compared in terms of conceptual focus, functional classification, measurement approaches, research perspectives, explanatory mechanisms, and policy responses. The review found that cultivated land multifunctionality refers to the capacity of cultivated land to provide multiple products, services, and values, including food production, ecological regulation, landscape culture, livelihood support, and social security. Trade-offs describe the competition, substitution, or mutual restriction among these functions under limited resources, changing land-use practices, and differentiated social demands. Compared with ecosystem service trade-offs, cultivated land multifunctionality trade-offs place greater emphasis on the semi-natural and semi-artificial attributes of cultivated land, as well as its combined production, ecological, economic, and social roles. Current research has mainly developed along three perspectives. Supply-side studies focus on how resource endowments, land-use intensity, spatial patterns, and management practices shape multifunctional outputs. Demand-side studies examine how farmers, residents, governments, and other stakeholders differ in their functional preferences and land-use decisions. Supply-demand coupling studies further analyze functional gaps, spatial mismatch, and coordination between functional provision and social demand. These perspectives have broadened the analytical scope of cultivated land multifunctionality trade-offs, but they remain weakly connected in many studies. In terms of measurement, integrated indicator systems remain the most widely used method for assessing cultivated land multifunctionality because they are operational, flexible, and suitable for spatial comparison. Ecosystem service models, landscape pattern indices, monetary valuation, and emergy analysis have been increasingly used to improve ecological process representation, spatial structure description, value comparability, and system-level efficiency assessment. Methods for identifying trade-offs include coordination degree models, grey relational analysis, polygon graphic methods, hot spot analysis, spatial autocorrelation, correlation analysis, social network analysis, mechanical equilibrium models, convergence analysis, trade-off degree models, and spatial mismatch indices. These methods have promoted the shift from functional assessment to functional relationship analysis. However, most existing studies still emphasize static correlation, coordination status, or spatial co-occurrence. They remain limited in explaining trade-off direction, temporal evolution, cross-scale transmission, uncertainty, and causal mechanisms. The formation of cultivated land multifunctionality trade-offs is shaped by the interaction of natural endowments, stakeholder preferences, and external environmental factors. Natural conditions define the supply boundary and functional potential of cultivated land. Stakeholder preferences influence land-use choices and functional priorities. Institutions, markets, urbanization, industrialization, demographic change, and policy instruments regulate multifunctionality trade-offs through incentives, constraints, and resource allocation. Existing governance studies have proposed four main pathways: zoning management based on functional differences, spatial governance and cultivated land layout optimization, compensation mechanisms for coordinating stakeholder interests, and technology-driven land-use transformation. These pathways provide practical tools for mitigating functional conflicts, but they are often discussed separately. Their links with trade-off diagnosis, driving mechanisms, and adaptive feedback are still insufficient. Overall, research on cultivated land multifunctionality trade-offs has shifted from function classification and static evaluation toward mechanism explanation and governance exploration. Future studies should strengthen theoretical integration, develop dynamic and multi-method measurement systems, deepen multi-scale and multi-stakeholder mechanism analysis, and build integrated governance frameworks that combine spatial optimization, policy regulation, economic incentives, ecological compensation, and technological innovation.