Ellis Davies, Betlands Farm, Llanddewi, Gower talks about the changes in farmin from horse drawn ploughs to tractors. He remarks on the dramatic shift from horse power to costly tractors and machinery, leading to larger fields, hedge removal, reduced labour, and reliance on safer modern sprays replacing older, more hazardous chemicals.
Transcription:

ED: Well farming changed when the horses disappeared because the horses were the power of the land and you had to have horse power. Unlike a tractor, when a tractor wears out, you have to buy a new one. Whereas with the horses they bred their replacements so it is far easier money wise to keep going in the old days than what it is today. Um, you bread, your replacements, and the implements were few and cheap, you ahd to have a plough and harrow and very little else. But today the implements, big tractors, big implements, a tractor cost £50,000 - £60,000 today and the implements are £8000 - £10,000 each to go behind it, so it's a tremendous commitment. I don't know how some manage it, how they manage it at all, they must borrow the money, I suppose and quietly pay it back, yeah?
Interviewer Sian Green: And we've heard from some people … the increase in size and the fact that there's…fewer people working now you were saying earlier…Did that shift happen at the same time as the horses, or was that more gradual as the machinery got bigger?
ED: Yes, as tractors and machinery got bigger, hedges were hit down, fields got bigger. A lot of hedges were initially hit out because of the rabbit problem. Pre-Myxomatosis days rabbits for a huge pest and ate a third of the field at least round the hedges, so they hit the hedges out and that reduced the rabbit population and also and there was less hedges and less to eat. You know a bigger field you would have a hedge around it but at least there wasn't hedges every three or four acres. So that was a major change.
As the tractors came along bigger field, bigger ploughs, bigger tractors to cultivate the field. And the sprayers came in after another major change in agriculture. As labour got less hand-hoeing went out and sprays came in. Sprays are still with us today, but have become much, much safer than what they were 30-40 years ago. A lot of the dangerous sprays were all taken off the market, and some sprays today aren’t as efficient as what they were years ago. Those were the ones that you had to take off the market, but that's the fact that remains but we still use sprays, but…they're very much safer than what they were 20 years ago.