Cropland abandonment poses a significant threat to China’s food security.It holds paramount importance for the Chinese people to secure their food supply by maintaining the prescribed 1.8 billion mu of cropland and fostering sustainable agricultural development.From the perspectives of air,water,and soil,based on the panel data of China Labor Dynamics Survey (CLDS) from 2014 to 2018 and environmental pollution data of prefecture-level cities，we conducted an empirical investigation into the effect of environmental pollution on cropland abandonment and its micro-impact mechanism by using two-way fixed-effects model and instrumental variables，and finally explored the heterogeneous effects of environmental pollution on cropland abandonment among different groups of farmers.The study’s findings are as follows.Firstly，environmental pollution has a significant positive impact on cropland abandonment，and this outcome remains robust after undergoing a battery of tests.Secondly，mechanism analysis reveals that environmental pollution substantially reduces crop yields and significantly elevate health risks for the labor force，ultimately rendering farmers to abandon cropland.Thirdly，heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that environmental pollution significantly heightens cropland abandonment among food crop growers and elderly farmers，with major sectors of Chinese agricultural production being particularly susceptible to its effects.Government departments should take into account cropland abandonment when assessing the effect of environmental pollution on agricultural production.Neglecting the impact of environmental pollution on cropland abandonment will lead to a significant underestimation of the decline in agricultural production attributed to environmental pollution.