Foto EMS Healthy soil is the basis for life on Earth. Good soil means good food. And a healthy soil is teeming with life. Soil biologists claim that there are more organisms in a teaspoon of soil than there are humans on Earth. That’s an estimate of course, but it’s still impressive. The new film Onder het Maaiveld documents some of that soil life.
Making the film is a cherished dream come true for WUR soil biologist Gerard Korthals of the Centre for Soil Ecology. Three years ago, he received nearly three million euros from the Postcode Lottery for the project Onder het Maaiveld, a collaboration with the nature conservation organization IUCN Netherlands, the Butterfly Foundation and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO). The aim of the project is to restore soil life in the Netherlands.
Main role
One component of the project is to increase public interest and support for healthy soil. The Soil Animal Days, started by Korthals in 2015, are now an annual event. But it was thought that a film in the cinemas starring soil animals would be an even better way of boosting interest in life underground.
The film company EMS, known for such films as De Wilde Noordzee (The Wild North Sea), came forward to make that film. The result will be shown in 50 cinemas across the country starting this week (2 March). There is also a sneak preview at the Heerenstraat Theatre on1 March, with many of Korthals’s WUR colleagues in the audience. The film leans heavily on WUR knowledge and expertise.
Vegetable garden
The theme running through Onder het Maaiveld is the attempt by a group of city dwellers to start their own vegetable garden based on the principles of regenerative agriculture. That form of agriculture thrives on healthy soil life and restoring the natural processes in the soil. Nourishing the soil rather than exhausting it. Being good to the soil will bear fruit: that’s the idea. But luckily, the documentary shows us more than that.
What gives Onder het Maaiveld its appeal to a wider audience are the stunning images of worms, woodlice, springtails and other underground grubs. The stars of this film are the creatures themselves. So Onder het Maaiveld is an interesting crossover between a nature film and a documentary, with its forays into the lab and even the lecture theatre.
Some of the footage was shot by research assistant Simone Brandt of Wageningen Field Crops in Lelystad. And macro photographer Wim van Egmond’s stop-motion shots of fungi are downright spectacular. Fungi are perhaps the real protagonists of the film. Van Egmond portrays them in a way the lay person never sees them. He turns them into works of art.
Scales
Onder het Maaiveld shuttles continuously between the worlds above and below ground, between the visible and the normally invisible and between different scales from macro to micro. Director Mark Verkerk skillfully forges those elements into a coherent whole. Those who have seen Onder het Maaiveld understand at least a little better why people like Korthals go to such great lengths to save the ground beneath our feet.
Korthals himself does not appear in the film, though. ‘I was cut out at the last minute, unfortunately,’ he says. ‘But I haven’t lost any sleep over that.’ Simone Brandt does make an appearance, as do her WUR colleagues and worm experts Ingrid Lubbers and Professor Jan Willem van Groenigen.
There will be a sneak preview of Under the Maaiveld at the Heerenstraat Theatre on Wednesday 1 March, with an introduction and Q&A with Gerard Korthals and other guests. The event starts at 7pm.
