Intense agricultural cultivation, and different techniques of soil management induce changes in the physical, chemical, and biological processes in a soil, altering its quality, density, porosity, and roughness, compromising, consequently, its water absorption and storage properties. Knowledge of the soil's surface conditions is important for the development of the root system and final crop yield, thus allowing corrections and reduction of losses. The goal of this work was to develop an optical technique to measure the roughness of the soil in depth, showing how the management affected the soil roughness by comparing two cropping systems, two cultures, and a control area. To access the soil roughness conditions, an optical setup was developed in which soil samples from a conventional tillage and no-tillage area with barley or beans crops were compared with a control area, without culture or management. The results indicated that the mean roughness was higher for beans than for barley, both under no-tillage and conventional tillage. This behaviour was confirmed by the fact that the bean crop had thicker and deeper roots than the barley. When the type of management was compared, there is a difference between beans and barley in no-tillage. Thus, it can be concluded that the optical technique used to characterize the surface roughness of the soil was found to be feasible, accessible, and to produce reliable results when applied to different types of cultures and soil usage.