WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday revised sweeping food safety rules proposed last year after farmers complained that the regulations could hurt business.

The new proposals would relax water quality standards and allow farmers to harvest crops sooner after using raw manure as fertilizer.

The final rules are due in 2015, and the FDA has been haggling over how to write them since Congress passed a food safety law in 2010. Regulators say balancing the need for tighter food safety standards after major food-borne illness outbreaks in spinach, eggs, peanuts and cantaloupe against the needs of farmers who are new to such regulations has been a challenge.

The rules originally proposed in January 2013 would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, making sure workers’ hands are washed, irrigation water is clean and that animals stay out of fields, among other things.

Food manufacturers would also have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean. Those changes would in many cases require new equipment, paperwork and record-keeping.

None of those priorities would change in the revised rule. But after complaints from farmers big and small who said the rules were too burdensome, the new proposal would relax some standards for the amount of bacteria that can be found in irrigation water and reduce the frequency with which it is tested, in some cases. The revised rules will also benefit brewers who sell leftover grain from making beer to ranchers and dairy farmers as animal feed.

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