As lawmakers crisscross the country campaigning on job creation and economic recovery, one agency in D.C., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), appears to be busy choking rural America's biggest economic engine.

Agriculture is an economic success story, with 21 million American jobs rooted in food and fiber production. And it's doing more than keeping people employed—the ripple effect of goods produced and purchased by the farming sector is felt from coast to coast.

This year alone, farmers and ranchers will produce $332 billion worth of goods after they have spent $187 billion to purchase inputs, made $62 billion in rent payments, paid $26.2 billion in wages to employees, and spent $14 billion in interest and financing.

What's more, rural America's achievements are largely propping up the rest of the economy, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

But farmers fear an overreaching EPA could stall things if left unchecked.

That fear seems to be reverberating in policy circles, too, with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) recently saying, "[The EPA is] raising costs for people, they're raising the price of food, and I don't think they're accomplishing anything."

"They're trying to regulate dust, trying to do all kinds of crazy things," he continued, "and I've told the President directly that he needs to rein them in but so far it hasn't happened."

The dust regulation Peterson referenced is a controversial proposal pending at the EPA known as the Ambient Air Quality Standard, and it's been widely ridiculed because wind and tractors on farms will inevitably kick up dust.

But it is just one in an ever-growing list of EPA initiatives that has rural America worried.

There's the re-review of Atrazine—an essential herbicide that's been safely used around the world for generations. Then there's an ill-defined labyrinth of permits that would sometimes be needed for pesticide applications—a proposal that has left both lawyers and farmers confused.

This confusion took center stage at a recent oversight hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee. During that hearing, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said, "The EPA has become public enemy number 1 of our farmers and ranchers," and Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) complained, "Farmers and ranchers do not have an army of environmental engineers, lawyers, and regulatory compliance specialists on their speed-dial."

This assault on rural America extends well beyond the farm, too. In January, the EPA will remove biomass power's "renewable" classification and will treat the green energy source the same as it does coal and other carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

Biomass power, which is generated largely by using forest byproducts, is a burgeoning business that was creating jobs in rural communities. Until now.

A bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders have written the EPA and scolded it for uprooting economic stimulus. These lawmakers are asking the agency to reinstate biomass power's carbon-neutral status in accordance with Congressional intent and international law.

The scientific community has even reprimanded the EPA in a letter signed by more than 100 professors that called this biomass rule "not consistent with good science," "incorrect," and "counter to our country's renewable energy and climate mitigation goals."

Economic recovery and environmental stewardship are not enemies. As The Hand That Feeds U.S. pointed out in its Green Series, farmers and ranchers are passionate about keeping the land and water that sustains them clean and productive.

And, unless they are suffocated by regulation and handcuffed by red tape, they will continue to power America's economic engine in a responsible way.