Agriculture is the dominant economic activity in Mpigi district with 79% of the Households deriving their livelihood from it. The main agricultural activities include Crops farming; Livestock management, Poultry and Fish farming. The main crops grown include Bananas, Coffee, Cassava, Sweet Potatoes, Maize, Millet, Beans, Ground Nuts, Rice, Sim-sim, Cowpeas, Sorghum, Pigeon Peas, Onions, Irish Potatoes, Field Peas and others. Agriculture, employs 85% of the population who practice integrated farming systems comprising of crop, livestock, aquaculture and apiculture. There are over 40 agriculture clusters in coffee, maize, passion fruits, beans, dairy, poultry and piggery. Then industrial sector of the district is pre-dominantly engaged in agro-processing of coffee, maize milling and fruit packing, among others. However, productivity and production is still low (Mpigi District Development Plan 2015).

The vegetation of the district used to be tropical moist forests – unfortunately, most of this has been cleared for farming. Due to land pressure, encroachments on forest land for agricultural production is common and frequent, mostly by local community members living in areas adjacent to the forest reserves (Namaalwa, Gombya-Ssembajjwe, and Hofstad 2001; Banana et al. 2012). The 2014 population and housing census put Mpigi district population at 250,548 persons (125,404 males and 125,144 females) (Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 2017); but currently it is 286,600 persons (UBOS 2020 with an annual growth rate of 2.4 per cent which is considerably high. The largest segment of the population is below 18 years of age (144,871 people) constituting about 51%. Such a structure undermines production and has worsened the dependency burden (Mpigi DDP, 2015).