Production—consumption assessments are needed in India that treat villages with an adjoining forest area as one integrated sampling unit. A basis for design of integrated fuelwood production—consumption (P—C) studies and use of data for strategic planning at the district, state and country levels is presented. The potential use of an area production model (APM) to assess the P-C balance on a state, district and sub-district level is described. This would be a feasible undertaking as most socio-economic and forest resources data needed are already available in time series form. Continuous forest inventory techniques, based on revisiting the identical sampling units, would be more efficient in providing information on trend compared to independent assessments on two or more occasions. A case for community involvement in fuelwood P-C studies and wood energy planning is made.