Despite these early developments, the consolidation of coffee as a Colombian export did not come about until the second half of the 19th century. The great expansion that the world economy underwent at that time allowed Colombian landowners to find attractive opportunities in international markets. Little by little, the United States became the most important consumer of coffee in the world, while Germany and France became the most important markets in Europe.
The Colombian then landowners had already tried the new opportunities that the expansion of international markets by exploiting. Between 1850 and 1857 the country a significant increase in the tobacco-and quinine-export, and then learn and live cattle. These early efforts in the export of agricultural commodities proved to be vulnerable, they were in fact only reactionary attempts to achieve the highest profitability of the high international prices of the time, as attempts to create a strong and diversified export nation to create platform. The production of these sectors in period of decline, when the ends of their respective Bonanza international awards whatsoever, a real consolidation in the industry was prevented.
With the decline in international prices, the transition of 19 the 20th Century records, reduced the profitability of the large estates. As if this were not enough, the thousand days war, the space in the first years, the new century, is also adversely affected by the large landowners, making it impossible for them to their farms in good condition, this fact summarized fact that these manufacturers had to be made in large quantities of foreign debt in order to further develop their plantations, which ultimately ruined. The coffee plantations of Santander and North Santander entered into crisis, and the estates of Cundinamarca and Antioquia stalled.
