Cultural evolution long ago supplanted genetic evolution as our key adaptive mechanism, and it has now put us on the verge of taking control of our genetic evolution, replacing natural selection with artificial, test-tube selection. And we’ll increasingly be steering the evolution of other species, as well.
All in all, the shape of life on this planet is now moving so fast via cultural evolution that evolution by natural selection is, for practical purposes, standing still.
As in animals, in its most extreme form plant domestication ends up with species which cannot reproduce by themselves and which are therefore without wild populations. In the case of cereals and other plants that reproduce by means of seeds, this implies that artificial selection has resulted in species which lack the ability to disperse their seeds. It is no accident that all the important food plants of the world belong in this category of totally captive populations, since the reduction of the ability to self-reproduce has resulted in greatly increased food values in the plants concerned.
