Bipartisan congressional agriculture leaders led a crowd of more than 80 farm and conservation organizations in chants of "farm bill now" in front the U.S. Capitol today, pushing the House GOP to bring the legislation to a vote.

The rally, organized by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union, comes as the five-year, nearly trillion-dollar piece of legislation has stalled on the House floor.

"We need a farm bill. We need it now," Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said to the audience. "There's no reason that this farm bill can't get passed by the House and get done in a conference committee. You just have to want to get it done. That's it. It's the political will to get it done. That's all this is about right now."

Joining Stabenow were House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.). Moran is a veteran of both the House and Senate agriculture committees, while Noem is the freshman liaison to the House leadership. Also attending, but not speaking, were about 15 other members of the agriculture committees.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he lacks the votes to pass the House version of the farm bill, which would spend $960 billion over the next decade. The current farm bill expires Sept. 30.

The House measure is similar to the Senate-passed version but contains key policy differences in the commodity subsidy titles. It also would cut $16 billion from the national food stamp program, compared with the Senate version's $4 billion cut. The Senate bill would provide $800 million in mandatory funding for rural energy programs, whereas the House bill provides only discretionary funding.

Despite the rally, it's widely expected there will not be a full farm bill this year; a short-term extension is more likely.

Peterson, the top agriculture Democrat in the House, apologized for his bleak prognosis at the rally but said he did not believe a farm bill would be passed this year if nothing changes this month. But he said an extension was a "bad idea" and an "unnecessary idea."

"I'll guarantee you there is no good outcome of this situation if we get into next year," Peterson said. "We're going to get re-scored by CBO [the Congressional Budget Office], there's going to be less money available, we've got to start all over again."

Before the rally, Noem said she was helping to organize members of the House on a discharge petition, a procedural act that would allow the bill to come straight to the floor if 218 members sign on. She said she wasn't sure, though, if the petition would attract enough signatures.

"Discharge petitions in the past haven't been very successful in actually getting legislation to the floor," Noem said, "but at this point we have to use every option available to us."

As the rally convened on the west lawn of the Capitol, several conservative House members held a briefing in a nearby congressional office building to urge opposition to the farm bill.

"For conservatives like myself, it's the real concern that what was once a farm bill is really not that -- it's a food stamps bill," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), whose amendment to cut more from the food stamp program to make the bill line up with the Republican budget failed in committee markup.

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) complained of subsidies for commodities like corn and soybeans contained in the House bill.

"When government begins picking winners and losers, begins subsidizing things, begins tinkering with that price structure," McClintock said, "it corrupts the data that consumers need to make accurate decisions in the marketplace so that capital flows to its highest and best and most productive use."

While several conservation groups attended today's rally -- including the National Association of Conservation Districts, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever -- other environmental organizations also today urged the House to reject the farm bill in a letter that went to each representative. The groups that sent the letter include the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Defenders of Wildlife and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The bill, they said, "cripples popular environmental programs, includes harmful rollbacks to environmental and health laws, and fails to make environmental protection a condition of receiving subsidies."

The legislation would cut $6 billion from conservation programs over the next decade and contains several provisions that target environmental regulations, including new pesticide permits that U.S. EPA began requiring last year as part of a Supreme Court ruling (Greenwire, July 6).

Reporter Nick Juliano contributed.