Zero tillage technology was developed to protect the soils from sealing rainfall, to achieve and maintain a open internal soil structure, to enhance biological processes in the soil, and to develop a means for safe disposal of any surface runoff that nevertheless will occur.
No-till agriculture replaces conventional soil tillage in order to reduce costs and labour - and to provide a mulch layer on the soil surface from the residues of the previous crop: this protects the soil surface and its ecology.