Should I do hand weeding or use herbicide, which is cheaper?

In most field crops herbicides now work out cheaper than hand weeding because labour has become costly and hard to find, and herbicide can cover an acre in a fraction of the time, but the best results usually come from combining the two rather than choosing only one. Hand weeding is precise, removes weeds completely, and is useful where no safe herbicide exists for the crop or where weeds escape a spray, but it is slow, expensive and often delayed until weeds have already cut the yield. Herbicide is fast and cheap per acre and, used at the right stage, stops weeds before they damage the crop, but it must match the crop, be applied on time with the right sprayer setup, and be rotated to avoid resistance. A practical low-cost plan for many crops is a pre-emergence or early post-emergence herbicide to handle the main flush, plus one timely hand weeding or inter-cultivation to clean up escapes. This costs less than full hand weeding and gives better, more timely control than spray alone. Use only herbicides recommended for your crop at the label dose, and your KVK can suggest the cheapest reliable combination for your fields.