From McClatchy:

Barry Bushue often uses pesticides on his 70-acre farm east of Portland, Ore., where he raises strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes and pumpkins.

"Managing for pests is constant and critical," Bushue, the president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, told Congress during a hearing this week.

Many farmers across the nation want to make sure that federal regulators don't make it more difficult to spread chemicals on their land.

On Capitol Hill, those farmers have found allies in Republicans and some Democrats who are working to ease the regulations and strip some power from the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the use of pesticides to control insects, diseases and weeds. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would negate the need for additional permits when spraying for pests near bodies of water.

For more, see: Some fear that EPA is going too far in regulating pesticides