Why farmers may want to keep, not kill, weeds

I took a class at UC Berkeley around 1978, called Weeds. It was taught by Boise Day, who belonged to a group of professors I referred to as the plant pathology cowboys. In one class, he drew our attention to a table in our text that demonstrated the nutrients  calculated from a corn field and those of the weeds in that cornfield.  The weeds were obviously winning, and the prof asked us, so what does that mean to us? I replied, that we should be  eating the weeds and not the corn. He did not appreciate this point of view.

This is the read about weeds that will get you thinking. Weeds are nature's soil builders and nutrient retrievers. The root system of and soil building of weeds far surpasses that of most cultivated crops.

https://savoursoilpermaculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/weeds_guardians_of_the_soil.pdf