AFAICT, it's a tool to achieve your goal on your unique peice of land.

People use the principles to achieve many outcomes in many climates & soil types. I'm not interested in greening deserts or growing fruit in arid environments.

I want pasture for cattle but I also value some plants (mainly fruits & starchy tubers these days). I'm thinking these rows of productive trees will be positioned reasonably close to my future house. I'm still not sure how I'd integrate cattle into the mix.

I'm just learning & applying some of the theory right now. I don't have pasture yet but I have some time & 2 acres of pretty rugged & largely unproductive land. It's a good opportunity to make mistakes while figuring out what value I can skim from it. 

 Ok, your interpretation of it sounds basically identical to restoration agriculture by Mark Shepard (rows of trees and pasture, savannah silvopastures) which is actually what we've been working towards the past half decade here... Slowly. 

 Yeah - there's nothing super new with it for me. It just feels like a slightly different approach to stacking plants together. I like the resets via pruning that stimulate growth periodically & provide mulch. It's a nice approach.