It is known that agricultural companies are developing highly productive and disease/pest resistant seeds that are irresitable to farmers. But these super crops are also designed to be highly dependent on herbicides, fertilizers etc that are targeted to that particular seed and its pests and nutritional requirements. So once you buy into that seed stock, you have to buy into their chemicals and agricultural methods, too. And of course, everything is carefully coordinated with interlocking patents.

Some of these seeds are so attractive to farmers that other, less productive but more robust strains are disappearing, leading to loss of genetic diversity. Its not inconceivable that some new disease of say wheat, or rice, could suddenly arise and wipe out the food source for millions of people, while alternate strains resistant to that pest may no longer be available.

Some government and UN agencies even maintain farms for growing and storing natural varieties of common crops so that if such a catastrophe does occur, we can fall back on less productive, but hardier grain stock. But these seeds are rapidly vanishing from the natural environment. And of course, funding these facilities is always low priority in today's political and economic environment.

Its not exactly "planned extinctions", but its pretty close.

BTW, have you noticed how odd bananas taste lately? It takes them forever to ripen, but when they finally do, they are only edible for a few days. And their peels come off differently than they used to.

How DO bananas reproduce, anyway? There are no seeds in the fruit. Maybe they have been bred into strains incapable of surviving without intense cultivation, like citrus, which can only reproduce by cuttings and grafts.