Crop landscape diversification alleviates soil antibiotic burdens

Crop production is essential for global food security, but simplified crop landscapes can intensify soil antibiotic pollution and reduce crop diversity. Here we show that redistributing existing cropland among crop types can address both problems without expanding agricultural land. Using a global multi-objective optimization framework across seven cropping zones, we identify where changes in crop spatial distribution produce the greatest joint benefits. The optimized crop landscapes reduce mean soil antibiotic concentrations from 124.1 ± 28.9 to 103.2 ± 7.2 nanograms per gram and increase mean crop diversity (Shannon index) from 1.43 ± 0.38 to 2.36 ± 0.18. Balanced weighting between pollution reduction and crop diversity performs best when more than 26.4% of the highest-priority areas are targeted. Regions dominated by maize and soybean receive the highest priority for intervention. These results provide a practical basis for targeted crop redistribution that protects soil health, improves crop diversity, and supports more resilient agricultural landscapes. Optimizing crop composition can simultaneously enhance crop diversity and reduce soil antibiotic pollution, with targeted redistribution of key crops delivering substantial environmental gains, based on a multi-objective optimization of global cropping systems across seven agroecological zones.