Netherlands in 100 Seconds | National Geographic

[Music] What do the Netherlands really look like? To get a better sense of proportion, let's go on a 100-second walk across the nation. Each second of the walk reveals one percent of the lands and how they look from above. Are you ready for the Netherlands in 100 seconds?

[Music] We walk through 18 kinds of land that have gone in a blink. Coastal mud flats occupy five percent of the Netherlands and five seconds of our walk. We spent eight seconds listening to birds and walking in large woodlands. The houses and gardens of villages, towns, and cities cover eight percent of the country.

[Music] And now we're in the deep for 12 seconds. It's time to wade and swim. We're crossing freshwater lakes. The rest of the land is used for farms. We walk for 12 seconds through a complex patchwork of small fields used for crops and cows, as well as occasional houses for people, pigs, and chickens.

We spend 18 seconds walking through larger fields of crops. Most is fed to livestock. We pass through maize, wheat, potatoes,

[Music] Sugar beet, vegetables, and flowers. Our last 24 and 24 seconds take us through pastures. This, the single biggest use of land, is mostly used for feeding and rearing cows. In all, at a time when a third of Dutch species are at risk of extinction, do we need to rethink this mix of lands we have and how we use them?

I need more trees, please. I think more balance would be better. So what if we made more space for nature?

[Music] You