Planet Soil

Steve Brantley

Abstract

Verkerk, M (Director). (2023). Planet Soil: The Power of the Underground. Collective Eye Films. 83 mins. Planet Soil is a Dutch documentary directed by Mark Verkerk that makes the case for understanding soil not as inert ground beneath our feet but as a teeming, interdependent living system fundamental to food security, climate stability, and ecological health. Combining groundbreaking microscopy, time-lapse photography, animation, and macro videography with accessible storytelling, the film is able to engage school-age viewers with enough substantive content to fascinate undergraduate students in introductory biology or environmental science courses. The film is structured around a series of sites and practitioners in the Netherlands. These include the regenerative strip farm of Folkert Botma in Engwierum, Friesland; a farm in Abcoude in the Province of Utrecht; Wouter van Eck’s food forest at Kettleburg; Tuin van Brasa in Amsterdam Zuidoost, a community park and garden built over a freeway tunnel; and the living rooftop gardens atop some 300 bus stops across the city of Utrecht, where researchers are mapping fungal biodiversity across an urban landscape. Together these sites build a cumulative argument that soil health is urgent and relevant in cities as well as on farms. The film introduces a substantial cast of scientists and researchers whose work anchors its scientific claims. Pier Oosterkamp explains the mechanical structure of healthy soil and how microbial activity creates the formations that allow air and water circulation. Soil biologists Ingrid Lubbers and Jan Willem Groenigen of Wageningen University conduct worm surveys that illustrate how earthworm diversity signals broader soil health. At AMOLF, the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, Professor Toby Kiers and researcher Loreto Oyarte Galvez demonstrate an imaging robot capable of capturing high-resolution, real-time images of fungal networks across forty plates simultaneously. Their invention allows researchers to track carbon and nutrient flow between plant roots and competing fungal networks. Toby Kiers describes these exchanges in terms of supply, demand, and trading strategies that function like a biological market. The film also documents research using DNA technology to measure microbial diversity across fifty different farms, revealing that strip-farmed soils (the soil preservation and sustainability technique described by Farmer Folkert Botma) harbor more than 9,000 species of protozoa compared to roughly 2,000 in soils heavily treated with pesticides and artificial fertilizer. This abundance of microscopic sold life is directly connected to crop health and reduced pesticide dependency. The film introduces a category labeled “soil animals” which encompasses organisms across a vast range of scales. On-screen labels identify species by both common and scientific names and append size measurements in millimeters or fractions thereof, allowing viewers to develop a concrete spatial imagination of the soil food web. A snail, a fly larva, a mite, and a nematode are labeled and scaled in this way; and a tardigrade (water bear) appears at 0.5mm. The film also presents the well-supported claim that 75% of all terrestrial carbon is stored in below-ground systems, positioning healthy soil as a major and underappreciated lever in climate change mitigation. Visually, Planet Soil represents a genuine achievement in cinematography. Microscopy sequences reveal soil aggregates, fungal hyphae (the long branching filaments that make up the majority of fungal bodies) and nematode locomotion at extraordinary magnification; time-lapse photography captures decay, fungal and mushroom growth, and mycelium development with beauty. The film repeatedly opens windows onto truly beautiful worlds invisible to the naked eye while never losing sight of the familiar creatures, snails, bees, worms, and moles, that share the same subterranean ecosystem. Verkerk’s allows extended passages run without narration or dialogue, trusting the imagery alone to carry the argument. These wordless sequences invite the viewer to observe and absorb rather than be instructed, and they speak to a filmmaker confident in the appeal of his material. The film’s structural rhythm reinforces this approach between the finely focused and the larger human (and ecological) systems. Verkerk moves fluidly between the microscopic world and the human-scale world, between the laboratory and the community garden, between the individual organism and the soil ecology. Scenes of children handling millipedes and peering through microscopes at nematodes from their own garden soil capture the moment when, as the film puts it, fear gives way to wonder. The cardboard sheet-mulching method demonstrated early in the film is one of several concrete, replicable techniques that give the film practical utility beyond its scientific content. Verkerk grounds scientific ideas in human narratives. Tuin van Brasa, is a community garden built over a freeway tunnel which connects previously divided neighborhoods in Amsterdam Zuidoost. The park and garden broadens the film’s scope to encompass urban social connections as well as ecological regeneration. The film closes on a quotation from pioneering American soil scientist Charles E. Kellogg: “Essentially, all life depends upon the soil ... There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together.” This idea crystallizes the film’s central argument linking the co-evolution of soil and life. The film’s one notable limitation is its geographic concentration: all sites in the Netherlands. While the scientific principles are universal, the film largely sets aside the economic, political, policy related and structural barriers that farmers in other contexts would face in adopting regenerative methods. That said, it would have been encouraging to see some evidence or statistical information about the adoption of regenerative methods in other nations or regions of the worlds. Educators using the film with advanced students may wish to supplement it with comparative materials addressing these challenges in different agricultural and socioeconomic settings. Planet Soil is a well-crafted documentary that succeeds on multiple levels. It functions as an introduction to soil biology for general and younger audiences, as a primer on regenerative agriculture for educators and practitioners, and as a visually and scientifically rich resource for undergraduate courses in ecology, environmental science, or sustainable agriculture. Its argument that soil health, food security, climate resilience, and community well-being are inseparable, is made with evidence, warmth, filmmaking skill. Awards: Winner, New York SCIENCE & NATURE FEEDBACK Film & Screenplay Festival

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