The growing threat to our countryside from the rise of US-style mega farms

How an American model of intensive farming is turning green fields into industrial sheds to keep up with our demand for cheap food

Last year I reported on the disturbing trend of mega farms in the UK with at least 1,110 in operation.

Now a new investigation from Compassion in World Farming shows that numbers have jumped to 1,176 - up from 974 in 2016.

It illustrates the startlingly high numbers of livestock reared indoors or without access to pasture, in the biggest farming units across the UK, at any one time.

Aerial photos taken by my Mirror colleague Adam Gerrard show cows packed into US-style feedlots, where cattle are fattened up before slaughter - without a blade of grass in sight.

The smell of ammonia coming from the stark industrial-sized sheds we photographed, home to nearly a million chickens, clogged the back of my throat - even from a distance.

Worryingly, many counties associated with open green pastures and extensive grazing are in fact some of the areas with the highest numbers of confined farm animals. Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Norfolk, ranked first, second and third respectively with Herefordshire and North Yorkshire also making the top ten.