We see Judea as a very arid region, desolate and unsuitable for agriculture. But it was seen as a desirable place to live by not only the Israelites, and sustained a surprisingly versatile agricultural yield throughout the centuries and indeed millennia.

Here's an account of Canaan given by an Egyptian in the 20th century BCE. "It was a good land named Yaa. Figs were in it, and grapes. It had more wine than water. Plentiful was its honey; abundant its olives. Every [kind of] fruit was on its trees. Barley there was and emmer. There was no limit to any [kind of] cattle."

Important to note, agriculture was quite different from what we have today. Currently in America, we have vast numbers of cattle ( 40 million!), and wheat (with corn largely produced for cattle feed and syrup). These resources require very good soil and a ridiculous amount of water. If you know anything about cattle meat production, you'll know how inefficient it is. In Canaan, wheat wasn't common until the Second Temple Period - barley was the staple grain, because it requires much less water and less nutrients in the soil.

Also, while cattle are described in the text as being "without limit", they were actually very rare by modern standards, goats were the most common livestock.

Fruits such as dates, grapes, figs, and pomegranates were very common in Canaan and were produced using terraces, to make as much use of rainfall as possible. In the Greco-Roman period, Judea became an important exporter of rice as well.

An interesting anecdote - when the text refers to "milk and honey", it refers to goat milk and "dvash anavim", a kind of syrup made by reducing dates, not honey from bees as implied by the translation. Unfortunately the translation isn't as accurate as it could/should be.

I'm afraid I don't have time to go into as much detail as I like, I hope this answer is sufficient for now. Please let me know if you have any questions at all and I'll be happy to try and answer them.

Thompson, J.A. Handbook of Life in Bible Times Leicester: IVP, 1986

Borowski, Oded (2002). Agriculture in Iron Age Israel. American Schools of Oriental Research.

Cooper, John (1993). Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food. New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc. ISBN 0-87668-316-2.