In the early 1900s, Jim Bennett's grandfather Asa Bennett operated a cannery and grew produce on his (location) farm. The family entered the poultry business soon after broilers first began to be raised commercially in the 1920s. At that time, each phase of the process of raising broilers-from hatchery to chicken house to process plant--took place at separate farms or locations. In 1952, poultry farmers banded together to market their broilers and formed the Delmarva Poultry Exchange. Buyers from processing companies bid on flocks of broilers brought from individual farms and put on the open market. Jim Bennett remembers

It was an exciting, though brief period in the broiler business. By 1968, Perdue decided to completely integrate the process of raising and processing chickens, completely controlling the product from start to finish. Farmers contracted to raise the birds and received a set price when they were grown. The quality and availability of broilers stabilized, but small growers lost much of their independence. In the early 1980s, the Bennett family got out of the poultry business because it was no longer profitable for them.