available raw materials are one of the limiting factors regulating carrying capacity
Carrying capacity Some aspects of a system's carrying capacity may involve matters such as available supplies of food, water, raw materials, and/or other similar resources. In addition, there are other factors that govern carrying capacity which may be less instinctive or less intuitive in nature, such as ever-increasing and/or ever-accumulating levels of wastes, damage, and/or eradication of essential components of any complex functioning system. Eradication of, for example, large or critical portions of any complex system (envision a space vehicle, for instance, or an airplane, or an automobile, or computer code, or the body components of a living vertebrate) can interrupt essential processes and dynamics in ways that induce systems failures or unexpected collapse. (As an example of these latter factors, the "carrying capacity" of a complex system such an airplane is more than a matter of available food, or water, or available seating, but also reflects total weight carried and presumes that its passengers do not damage, destroy, or eradicate parts, doors, windows, wings, engine parts, fuel, and oil, and so forth.) Thus, on a global scale, food and similar resources may affect planetary carrying capacity to some extent so long as Earth's human passengers do not dismantle, eradicate, or otherwise destroy critical biospheric life-support capacities for essential processes of self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, and self-repair.
Factors of production In economics, factors of production, resources, or inputs are what is used in the production process to produce outputâ€”that is, finished goods and services. The utilized amounts of the various inputs determine the quantity of output according to the relationship is called the production function. There are three basic resources or factors of production: land, labour and capital. The factors are also frequently labelled "producer goods or services" to distinguish them from the goods or services purchased by consumers, which are frequently labeled "consumer goods". All three of these are required in combination at a time to produce a commodity.