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Food production data provide important measures of welfare (nutritional status). They also provide important policy signals to governments. The estimation of crop production entails estimating both the area planted to the crop and production per unit area (yield). The usage of objective (i.e., crop-cutting) methods to estimate yields has replaced subjective methods (estimates by farmers and government officials) and has probably produced improved estimates of yields. Area estimates have not attained obvious improvements in recent years. Consistency checks between annual sample survey data and census data have been used to assess the reliability of production data. In addition, consistency checks between food consumption, production, trade stocks and costs data provide another index of reliability. These checks, when applied to food production estimates from South Asian countries, show that some improvement in reliability has probably occurred over time but that contemporary estimates of food production remain subject to considerable error. The estimation of food production in the form of livestock products (milk, meat, eggs) is rudimentary at best in South Asia and this is likely to be the case for many other developing countries as well. Methods for improved estimates exist and are in use in many developing countries. The policy value of better estimates for policy making in South Asia and other developing countries is sufficient to call for more resources and better methods to measure food production. Key words: Measurement; Food production; Food consumption