Writing Alien Grains

Given how critical agriculture, especially the domestication of grains, has been to every culture that ever made it past the grass hut stage it is no stretch of the imagination to posit that grains (also know as cereals) are equally important to other species. Grains or grain products are also edible to a range of body types, including herbivores, granivores, insectivores, and even hard core predators.  A rolling field of grain then becomes a perfect point of intellectual and physical meeting for two members of different species. Both can look around and say, "I know what this place is. I know what it is for, I can move on from here." 
On the other hand there is another, perhaps darker side to the cereal grains. Plants are not passive in their ecology by any means. They fight every second of every day for their place and the short nature of grasses means that trees, shrubs, and even most herbaceous weeds can out compete them. Left to their own competition the grasses would be  quickly pushed to near extinction. But they have made themselves critical to the dominant animal species. Not just humans, but beavers, elephants, and other species have been known to alter their environments to favor grasses. Now these humble cereals dominated a massive swath of the fertile surface of the Earth. So are we really cultivating this plant? Or are the cereals cultivating us? 
Something for writers to remember on #NationalCerealDay.