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# Cultivation Improvement Priority

## Definition

The economic principle that agricultural development must precede urban manufacturing because subsistence is logically and temporally prior to convenience and luxury. The industry that procures subsistence necessarily comes before that which provides luxury goods, making agricultural surplus the essential foundation for any urban economic development.

## Source Chapter

Book III, Chapter 1

## Context

This principle underlies Smith's entire argument about the natural order of economic development, explaining why no society can develop manufacturing or foreign trade without first achieving agricultural surplus sufficient to support non-agricultural populations.

## Economic Domain

Production

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