Modern Dairying

EWG highlights an article on dairy and manure (the two are inextricably linked) from Ithaca, NY. It's mostly on the pollution from a large 6,000+ cow dairy. But I found this quote interesting (and explaining why the robot milkers I linked to earlier):

"Why larger dairies?" said David M. Galton, a dairy management professor at Cornell University. "Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit City and Home Depot and Lowe's - they're doing it to dilute out cost and to maintain or improve standard of living. It's like every other segment of our economy. Larger dairies are trying to address the ever-rising cost of producing milk and standard of living."
In 1993, farms with 200 or more cattle made up 3.6 percent of the state's dairies, according to USDA statistics. By 2002, they made up 9 percent.
"The larger the dairy farm, the lower the costs are. And so, as the costs keep rising - fuel costs, feed costs, taxes - it puts more economic pressure on the individual farms to produce more milk,'' Galton said. "If you take the milk price of 1980 and adjust it for inflation, the milk price would be $38.92 per 100 pounds. The milk price today is approximately $20 per 100 pounds."

I don't like the statistic in the middle (is the writer saying 3.6 percent of the dairy cows in the state were in dairies over 200 cows in 1993, and 9 percent in 2002--that would be the best fact to offer.