Abstract: The delimitation of basic farmland is the premise of permanent protection of basic farmland. Scientific delimitation is the foundation of reasonable layout and continuous optimization of basic farmland, which is of great significance to ensure national food security and ecological security. Based on the policy evolution of basic farmland, this paper summarized the research progress of basic farmland delimitation methods in recent years. The research results show that: (1) The development of basic farmland connotation is in accordance with its policy evolution, which has its own emphasis in different periods. (2) The existing research has formed a roughly unified technical process for delimitation, but there are some differences in each step. (3) The index system is the core of basic farmland delimitation, which has realized the evolution from single to multiple, and from subjective to objective. (4) The new era of basic farmland delimitation faces new challenges and demands such as comprehensive land consolidation, rural and agricultural transformation, and permanent and dynamic adjustment, which is necessary to pay attention to basic farmland delimitation to meet these new requirements, so that basic farmland can better play an important role in territorial spatial planning and ecological civilization construction.