In Washington today, rumors fly among ag circles that House Speaker John Boehner is close to naming the House’s team of farm bill Conferees. According to multiple sources, the GOP contingent will include Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas of Oklahoma and Reps. Mike Rogers of Alabama, Randy Neugebauer and Mike Conaway of Texas, Rick Crawford of Arkansas, Steve King of Iowa, Austin Scott of Georgia, Martha Roby of Alabama, Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Rodney Davis of Illinois and Jeff Denham of California.

In addition, Speaker Boehner is expected to name Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.), a non-Committee member who offered the amendment to the House farm in June to require able-bodied adults without dependents to work or be looking for work to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which resulted in the defeat of the bill. Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson has stated that the Democrat conferees will all be Agriculture Committee members.

Absent from the list of rumored House Conferees is Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), a consistent proponent of ASA’s approach to decouple payments from current-year planting decisions in the bill’s Commodity Title.

There appears to be disagreement on when the House conferees will be named. In an interview with AgriTalk earlier Thursday, Rep. Noem indicated that conferees would be named Friday. Chairman Lucas, however, suggested in an interview with CQ that conferees would not be officially named until after House leaders finished with negotiations on the debt ceiling, the timetable for which remains unclear.