The son of the company’s founder and the father of its current chairman, grew into a world protein leader under Tyson’s management. The Wall Street Journal notes that he was credited with bringing industrial scale to chicken farming. Annual revenue rose under his watch to more than $10 billion from about $50 million a year.
Through most of the 1950s Tyson worked with his father to grow the family business, then known as Tyson Feed and Hatchery, supplying feed and baby chicks to local poultry producers in Northwest Arkansas. In 1958 the company became "vertically integrated" by building its first chicken processing plant in Springdale, with Tyson overseeing the construction and then becoming its first plant manager.