Manchester will soon be home to the country’s first professional baseball field that’s gone organic.
The New Hampshire Fisher Cats field at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester is working with the nearby dairy company Stonyfield Organic to make its field permanently pesticide-free over the next two years.
Kristina Drociak, head of public relations at Stonyfield, said the partnership was part of a Stonyfield initiative, #playfree, to share organic techniques with playing fields and public parks.
"We had been managing the pastures where our cows graze and the fields where we grow our ingredients organically for so long," she explained, "But what about the places where our kids and our families spend so much time?"
Drociak cites studies showing that 65 percent of sports fields use a mixture of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, some of which have been linked to health problems, including cancer. Stonyfield is also partnering with public parks in Dover and Portsmouth to help them stop using harmful chemicals.