The easing of the supply position of firewood in the recent period is an extremely interesting and encouraging development. I am persuaded by Anil Agarwal's hypothesis on the positive supply response from the rural population to the fuelwood crisis as the main explanatory factor beyond the observed improvement, especially in the light of the slow down in the official programmes of farm forestry. There is a need to conduct regular surveys on various aspects of people's performance on tree planting with a view to formulating policies that are relevant to the ground realities. Unfortunately, the existing farm surveys are not sufficiently oriented to estimate the number and types of trees planted and the pattern of input used for such enterprises. The whole issue has to be taken up with the ministries of agriculture and rural development and the relevant statistical organisations for gearing up the statistical system to cope with the new requirements of data and analysis. Towards this end, the minimum that needs to be done, to start with, is to prepare a status paper on surveys and statistics in this field.