Plant domestication and diversity

Honestly I've never thought about how plants have undergone domestication, it's always been a given for me. But Ashley's presentation today opened up the various processes by which a plant can be domesticated and disseminated. I've often wondered, who the heck thought of eating __________? Especially things like the palm heart or something, where you have to cut down the palm and take out a very specific part of the plant. Who thought of that? But never much after that. While who thought of eating the palm heart and why may still be an unanswerable questions, at least the mechanisms of domestication can be explored(after having tasted that delicious morsel of palm heart), as well as the spread of domestication (once word got around of this yummy treat).*

I still don't know that I would go on to study that, but I can appreciate how small farmers can contribute to agro-biodiversity. I mean, given the discussion we had regarding animal rights vs. property rights, and the incentives that can be given to farmers to farm sustainably, market pressures and large corporations play a major role in determining whether sustainable farming will be undertaken. In this case, sustainability refers to the biodiversity of crop species, as opposed to farming only one type of palm which could make the area susceptible to large impacts because of relative genetic homogeneity.

This has been the case with pollinators as well, specifically bees. Colony collapse disorder(CCD) has ravaged the European honey bee, which appears to be highly susceptible to a certain pathogen. This has affected crops throughout the US because European honey bees have specifically been imported, harvested and transported throughout the nation to pollinate commercial crops. Commercial farmers have relied on this honey bee very much, especially since it has displaced native bee populations. The lack of biodiversity in bees has consequently had severe negative impacts on humans.