Technical Abstract: The need exists to understand which agricultural land uses and land resource types have the greatest potential to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contributing to global change. Global change is a natural resource issue increasingly contributed to by human activities that now joins other important issues facing agricultural scientists, such as depletion of soil organic carbon (SOC), soil degradation and contamination, and pollution of natural waters by soil sediments and nutrients. Increasing demand for food by the growing global population is resulting in increased GHG emissions, soil disturbance, fossil fuel consumption to produce agricultural products, and biomass burning. To address these issues and the threat of accelerated GHG emissions, this paper addresses: (1) current scientific facts about the attributes of soil and natural resources, (2) strategies for sustainable use of our finite, non-renewable, and fragile land resources, and (3) advances made by agricultural sciences and their potential role in forming policy.