Seeing as agriculture developed independently in many areas, there is likely slight variations in how it began. But it's pretty clear that it could not have begun with deliberate breeding because the concept would not be known. It would first have to be observed.

beer.
It has been stated here and elsewhere that the ability to make fermented alcoholic products from grain was very likely to be the motivator that made people settle in areas conducive to grain growing. It allowed for organized social networks to grow, harvest, and store the ingredients to make beer. The fact that grain could also be eaten directly was probably secondary.

Why did they first farm? Because they had too many children, as hunter/gatherers, for women to carry, the women went on strike, "figure out a way we can stay in one place", and men owned farming, after many generations of horticulture had already staged the means for a more aggressive approach to feeding one's family.
Farms needs cities.
EVEN THOUGH, cities had higher disease rates (proximity and lack of sewerage/sanitation), they were still built...

"beer." Upvoted for that sentiment. I wonder if it's (fermentation) something we picked up from over ripe fruit and took out of africa.
http://news.berke...r-booze/

Problem with this type of research is the researcher's lack of experience feeding a family. Have they ever worked a scratch farm or even gardening? Raised animals or ever had to hunt & fish to feed themselves?

Everywhere was a virgin wilderness. i.e. damn little to eat at the best of times and what there was, wasn't all that edible. Hunting was exhausting and dangerous. Prey were not cooperative and predators didn't want to share.

The women and children foraging for anything edible. Baking plants in campfires made them easier to digest. And what didn't digest was crapped out near the camp.

Always on the move, the hunter-gathers reused the better campsites. To find previously selected clumps of edibles growing from the firepits and latrines of their predecessors. This cycle repeating for thousands of years. Slowly accumulating in fertile areas an increasingly better selection of food plants. Which attracted prey to be selected for domestication.

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Problem with this type of research is the researcher's lack of experience feeding a family. ...

Reference cite?

Mmmmhhhh, let me see: Kain was the farmer and Abel did the shepherding trick. There were no hunter-gatherers at the time the first agriculture took place. That kind of living only started after the global flood and even then only after the dispersal at Babel took away common knowledge, leaving some to resort to hunting for survival.