Further testimony comes from the archbishop-viceroy Caballero y Gongora (1787) who registered the presence of the crop in the north east of the country near Giron (Santander) and Muzo (Boyaca) in a report that he provided to the Spanish authorities.

In 1808 the first commercial production was registered with 100 green coffee bags (60 kg each) that were exported from the port of Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela.

The great expansion that the world economy underwent at that time allowed Colombian landowners to find attractive opportunities in international markets.

The production of these sectors went into a period of decline when the respective bonanza of their international prices terminated, hence a true industrial consolidation was prevented.

In the first decades of the 20th century a new model to develop coffee exports based on the rural economy had already been consolidated, supported by internal migration and the colonization of new territories in the center and western regions of the country, principally in the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Valle, and in the northern part of Tolima.

The cultivation of coffee was a very attractive option for local farmers, as it offered the possibility of making permanent and intensive use of the land.

Under this productive model of the traditional agriculture, based on the slash and burn method, the land remained unproductive for long periods of time.

Although this new breed of coffee made of country farmers demonstrated a significant capacity to grow at the margin of current international prices, Colombia did not have a relatively important dynamism in the global market of this product.

The union of local farmers and small producers around the Federation permitted them to confront logistical and commercial difficulties that would not have been possible individually.

With time and through the research made at Cenicafé, founded in 1938, and the Federation's agricultural Extension Service, improved cultivation systems.

While a 2011 New York Times article claimed that regional climate change associated with global warming had caused Colombian coffee production to decline from 12 million 132-pound bags, the standard measure, to 9 million bags between 2006 - 2010, with average temperatures rising 1 degree Celsius between 1980 and 2010, and average precipitation increasing 25 percent in the preceding years, disrupting the specific climatic requirements of the Coffea arabica bean,[14] production of Colombia coffee increased significantly from 2011 to 2018 to 14.2 million bags.

[11] The National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia is a non-profit business association, popularly known for its "Juan Valdez" marketing campaign.