Two States Of California?

California’s Central Valley farmers, frustrated by what they call uninformed urban voters dictating faulty farm policy, have proposed splitting off 13 counties on the state’s coast, leaving the remaining 45, mostly inland, counties as the “real” California, The New York Times reports.

The reason, the farmers say, is that people in those coastal counties, which include San Francisco and Los Angeles, simply do not understand what life is like in the state’s rural areas. The final straw for many was Proposition 2, a ballot measure in November that banned the tight confinement of egg-laying hens, veal calves and sows. While many food activists and politicians in the state hailed the vote as proof of consumers’ increasing interest in where their food comes from, the proposition’s passage has angry farmers and their allies wanting to put the issue of secession to a vote, perhaps as soon as 2012.