Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski shows off what he calls "closed canopy gardening" - the idea is to reduce the amount of sun that reaches the soil. You can hardly see the paths. This is an early phse for a food forest or for agro forestry. YouTube - paulwheaton12's Channel
Organic or not, little sun means little harvest period. Forest edges yes they do this in the jungels and have been doing it a lot longer than we have been here plowing fields.
Actually, kyfarmer, the sun is so brilliantly bright up here in Montana in July and August that much of the garden will die without row covers to difuse the sunlight. Plus, this far north it's light out from about 4:30 AM to about 10:30 PM on our property in the summer. All those hours of extremelty dry (around 10% humidity) sunlight and wind pretty much sucks the life out of plants, even with thick mulch. Tomatoes sunburn and are bleached on one side. Leaves of plants burn white.