In agriculture, people have taken wild plants that can't be eaten by people - and turned them into wonderful food sources. And that's because genomes can change, and people working with plants have picked mutations. Mutations are nothing more than genetic changes.

In many places in the developed world, we eat or waste probably twice as many food calories as we really need. We're wasteful of food. We ship all over the world. We're now realizing that generating the energy to ship the food around the world is also ruining our climate.

In the last century, as we learned more about genes, we were able to devise ways of accelerating evolution.

There are probably already too many people on the planet.

Weeds do become resistant to herbicides, and it needs to be managed with multiple herbicides.

Jumping genes are fundamental because they're agents of change. Everybody knows that organisms evolve. What makes them evolve is that their genes are dynamic and in motion. A familiar example is the stripe-y corn - called Indian corn - that you buy in the fall.

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology.