The Guatemalan authorities have approved a project for large-scale cultivation of bamboo, with support from the government of Taiwan, deputy agriculture minister Ramiro Pérez told Tierramérica. Says Pérez, bamboo ''could even be a good substitute for coffee,'' a traditional crop and export of Guatemala, but just barely emerging from a long and acute crisis brought on by plummeting international coffee prices.

The Taiwanese project would seek to multiply the 80 bamboo plantations existing today, and promote planting of some 1,200 varieties, which are classified according to their use: food, furniture, paper or construction material.

Derick Calderón, president of the Guatemalan Bamboo Association, explained that the plant is ''innovative, abundant and low-cost for supplying the population's demand for housing, especially in rural areas.''

Another virtue of bamboo, whose stalks are hollow, is that it can be cut back periodically, regenerating itself after the first harvest.