This article analyzes the problem of food shortages in Cartagena de Indias in the second half of the eighteenth century and first decade of the nineteenth century. It examines the soil conditions in the province, its water resources, and diverse types of production, all of this to be able to assert that at the time in the territory the natural conditions for agricultural and meat production were given. However, both economic and political interests of the local business sector endeavored to prove the absence of suitable conditions for agricultural production in order to push the import of foreign products, among which flours.