Abstract:As the largest fertilizer user, China consumes one third of the total the world does. In despite of its role in increasing agriculture production and ensuring food security, fertilizer utilization contributes to a series of negative global and regional eco-environmental impacts, such as quality degeneration of farm produce, damage to ecological quality and harm to human health. Hereby, the authors estimated the environmental cost of utilization of mineral fertilizers in China, by means of emergy analysis(EMA) and disability adjusted life years(DALY). Results reveal that the environmental cost of fertilizer utilization in China was considerable:(1) the total costs in the year of 2005 reached ¥18.8 billions, accounting for about 1.5% of the increment of the value added of farm in the same year;(2) the annual cost growth rates averaged 7.1% in the period of 1990~2005, and fortunately, the rate is decreasing remarkably in the 21st century; and (3) provinces, more developed in economy, are also regions more intensively under fertilization environmental impact.