Four principal issues facing developing countries, such as India, are: (i) meeting food demands of the growing population, (ii) reducing risks of soil and ecosystem degradation, (iii) minimizing risks of eutrophication and contamination of natural waters, and (iv) decreasing net emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. A viable solution lies in a paradigm shift of not taking soils for granted. Soils must be improved, restored and used rather than depleted, degraded and abused. Basic principles of soil management are: (i) creating a positive nutrient balance in agro-ecosystems, (ii) using crop residue, manure and other bio-solids as components of integrated nutrient management for enhancing nutrient use efficiency, (iii) improving water use efficiency, and (iv) reducing or eliminating plowing. Adoption of these measures requires a radical shift in scientific, social, ethnic and cultural fabric of a society through developing alternatives to: (i) using dung as cooking fuel, (ii) crop residue as fodder, (iii) top soil for brick making, (iv) plowing for weed control, and (v) flood irrigation. These practices, used for thousands of years, may have been sustainable when population was low. With large population and increasing, these extractive practices are rapidly degrading natural resources, polluting the environment and changing the climate. Establishing bio-fuel plantations on the village common land and degraded soils, using forage-based crop rotations, making bricks from fly ash and other by-products, adopting no-till farming and using drip or sub-irrigation are high priorities which require serious and immediate attention of policy makers, land managers, farmers and public at large. While improving agronomic productivity and advancing food security, soil applications of dung, crop residue and other bio-solids have strong regional and global impact on the carbon cycle, hydrologic balance, climate and drought, ecosystem restoration and quality of surface and ground waters.