Photosynthesis is the starting point for almost every food chain, sustaining most life on Earth. You would be forgiven, then, for thinking nature has perfected the art of turning sunlight into sugar. But that isn’t exactly true. If you struggle with life goals, it might reassure you to know even plants haven’t yet reached their full potential.
Every evolved trait is a trade-off between the benefit it provides and its cost in energy. The plants we domesticated for food are only as good at converting sunlight to sugar as they had to be to survive and reproduce. From a given amount of sunshine, most plants convert less than 5% of that light energy into biomass, and under some conditions, less than 1%.
