Gregg Sauder could’ve been relaxing on a beach somewhere after selling Precision Planting to Monsanto for $250 million in 2012. But that’s just not in his DNA. The Hall of Famer’s competitive drive and deep-rooted passion for helping farmers succeed pushes him to keep innovating as founder and president of 360.
“I’ve been very competitive my entire life. I’m just driven,” says Sauder, who founded Precision Planting in 1993 with his wife Cindy in Tremont, Ill. “I have a lot of energy. My favorite thing is just to work. My kids don’t understand. They tease me all the time on Saturdays. But if I can have 5-6 projects lined up, I’m just over the moon.
“We’re probably working harder now than we’ve ever worked in our lives, and we were pretty busy before,” he adds. “It was never a question of whether we’re going to take this income and just relax. The question was how can we change ag?”
Answering the Call
Before launching two revolutionary ag tech companies, Sauder was a struggling farmer who became an inventor out of necessity. He was never satisfied with the way equipment ran and always thought there was room for improvement in his operation.
“I remember long before we even had a farm shop, I’d be laying out in a white rock drive with nothing but a vice grip and a crescent wrench, trying to re-shape, re-build and re-weld,” Sauder says.
He also remembers a few sleepless nights spent worrying about a five-figure financial hole and inaccurate planters costing him yield.
“I first met Gregg in the Spring of 1990, and it was obvious from the get-go that Gregg was a perfectionist. I’ve walked many research plots with Gregg and if he spotted a double-emerging crop, he’d immediately stop and dig one of the seeds out. His Precision Planting meters set a new standard and changed the industry. As meters improved, it was a given the industry needed better monitors, so that, too, became a mission of Gregg’s. He created a monitor that farmers could not only understand but help them make great strides in improving their operation. Gregg made a major impact in the ag equipment industry, but over the past 35 years, he never lost sight of the importance of family and faith above all…” – Tom Evans, retired vice president, Great Plains Manufacturing
“Lord, I didn’t marry Cindy to bankrupt her,” Sauder recalls praying one night. “I was stressed because I couldn’t figure out how I was going to earn. It wasn’t because I didn’t have energy. I wasn’t generating income, despite working 16-hour days.”
His prayers were answered in the form of a phone call from Eugene Keeton, inventor of the Keeton Seed Firmer, finger-pickup meter for corn and brush meter for soybeans. The Kentucky No-Till Legend heard about Sauder’s challenges and asked if he could pay him a visit.
“Thankfully, I had enough wisdom to let him come,” Sauder says. “It would’ve been just as easy for me to say, ‘I’m too busy. I’m too important. I don’t have time in the middle of planting season.’
“He told me he had 5 seed firmers,” Sauder recalls. “I planted that spring with all 5 duct-taped on, and it was amazing.”
Dawn of Precision
Motivated by Keeton’s invention, Sauder began his own journey to help other farmers get the most out of their equipment. He started custom setting planters for neighbors, and business took off from there.
Sauder partnered with Keeton to manufacture and distribute the Keeton Seed Firmer, which became the founding product of Precision Planting.
“This happened right when corn seed costs per acre exploded because of GMO traits,” Sauder says. “It couldn’t have been a better time to start Precision Planting. It was a dream of mine. No matter where you lived, we could improve your production by 10-15 bushels per acre.
“Gregg’s curiosity of trying to do better led to the planter performance bar being raised so high that OEMs had to take notice of what his company was doing. He also wanted to empower his dealers. He believes the farmer is the boss, and he taught us how to help them. Gregg hosted many field days to teach and show everything he’s learned. We still do that at our dealership, modeled after what he started several years ago…” – Rich Schlipf, Schlipf Precision Ag (Milford, Ind.)
“I just threw caution to the wind and we jumped in,” he recalls. “That first year, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing, but suddenly I had 600 meters in the shop. I looked at Cindy and said, ‘Whether we like it or not we’re in business.’”
Pioneer’s vice president at the time, Jerry Wishman, took notice and hired Sauder to train 800 dealerships on how to fine-tune planters.
“Jerry told me that 50% of the planters in the country are junk, and Pioneer’s genetics were taking a hit for it,” Sauder says.
While pioneering the planter retrofit market at Precision Planting, many of Sauder’s engineering breakthroughs from 1993 to 2012 focused on solving 3 core issues for farmers: seed singulation, trench placement and cab-visible diagnostics. Key products developed included the MeterMax Ultra, eSet and vSet meters, 20|20 SeedSense, SpeedTube, CleanSweep and WaveVision.
A New Chapter
Fast forward to 2013, shortly after selling Precision Planting, Sauder made the most of another adverse situation. He launched his second company, 360 Yield Center (rebranded as 360 in 2026), after a drought resulted in the worst growing season in the history of the family farm. Sauder wanted to equip his farm, and others, with cutting-edge tools to knock Mother Nature’s curveballs out of the park.
“We spent our lives working with planter attachments, but when we started 360, we knew that nutrients by the plant is where the future’s going to be,” he says. “We focused all our technology and engineering efforts around nitrogen.
“Gregg set audacious goals and was able to recruit the talent it took to achieve them. He could get people to believe big things were possible. He was grateful that talented people would leave fantastic jobs at Caterpillar and Deere to join him on his mission. As people left work for the day, he would always say, ‘Thanks for today.’ He knew your spouse and your kids’ names and ages like you were family. And his family was always working side-by-side with the engineers and production team. The kids would spend evenings attaching springs to finger meters and his wife Cindy was an equal partner in every decision…” – John Larkin, longtime 360 and Precision Planting executive
“It’s not easy to start over and we had a great team of individuals at Precision Planting,” he adds. “You quickly learn in business it’s never about yourself. It’s about the team that surrounds you. We built Precision Planting one step at a time from the ground up. When we started 360, I realized I don’t have all that much more time, so we did the opposite and started from the top down. I enjoyed the challenge of getting the company where it needed to be. We’ve brought in the right talent, and it’s working for us.”
The right talent includes Gregg and Cindy’s 7 children. Each remain heavily involved in the business, and the oldest, Tim, is currently the director of product development and head of engineering.
“I’m not a college-trained engineer,” Tim says. “My ‘degree’ comes from years in our farm shop solving problems from things that broke. My approach to inventing and innovating is that we learn more by spending time in the field than we do in front of the CAD screen. So, our team of college-trained engineers spend most of their time out of the office.”
“Tim’s basically taking over the direction of the company,” Sauder says. “When we’re in a leadership meeting, he’s at the whiteboard, not Dad. But we talk constantly. I have such a close relationship with all my kids. They’re my best friends.”
Gregg Sauder, Shortline Legends Hall of Fame 2026
Maintaining that family feel with all 175 employees is crucial to the company’s success, Sauder says. In the summer, he opens his home to everyone for a massive gathering that feels more like a family reunion than a company event.
“We had over 600 people there last time. I tell everyone to bring their parents, grandparents, friends, kids,” Sauder says. “We do fireworks right before the 4th of July. We feed everybody and have tons of toys and games for the kids. I want them to see how much we value them. I like to create that family culture.”
The close-knit culture creates an environment where everyone feels a sense of purpose and their hard work is appreciated.
“You’ve got to surround yourself with innovative, free-thinking people and it’s amazing how hard they’ll work. I love it,” Sauder says. “And you’ve got to notice them and talk to them. There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘You’re doing a really good job and I appreciate it.’ That matters. I know you’re paying them, but I rarely met people that didn’t like to be thanked.”
Breakthrough Innovation
Sauder remembers Tim asking him one day about how they could take their farm to the next level.
“I said, ‘Without question Tim, it’s water. We’re going to have to figure out how to put water on because without water you go nowhere,’” Sauder says. “I never want my corn to have a bad day.”
“What if we figured out an autonomous machine that could run 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and could band water like we band N?” Tim eventually asked.
“Tim, I’m fully convinced we will not design a machine for sand country. But what if we can figure out a way to do it at a low volume?” Sauder remembers saying.
“Gregg combines the curiosity of an inventor, the vision of an entrepreneur and the practicality of a farmer. He’s passionate, energetic and never afraid to challenge conventional thinking, but everything is ground in a genuine desire to help farmers succeed. He can discuss business strategy and innovation at the highest levels, yet he never loses sight of the realities farmers face in the field…” – Aaron Wetzel, vice president, John Deere production & precision ag systems
The father-son team found their drought-busting solution in the creation of 360 RAIN, an autonomous 3-wheeled irrigation and nutrient adaptive application system that delivers inputs directly to the base of the plant throughout the growing season. The machine is designed to use 40% of the water used by center pivot irrigation systems. 360 RAIN follows paths created by the planter, can hold 3,000 feet of hose and draw from a variety of water sources, including direct well connection, pipeline-fed risers or surface water.
Out of all his precision technology innovations, Sauder believes 360 RAIN could be the biggest breakthrough yet.
“Will 360 RAIN be larger than Precision Planting? Possibly, I think it can be,” Sauder says. “It looks like it could pass anything we’ve done in the past. I obviously still use all the Precision Planting products. When I’m cleaning the planter out, sometimes I just marvel as I’m tearing that row unit apart and realizing all the effort that went into it and all the pain with the engineers. It’s over 10 years old now and that technology is still working flawlessly. But 360 RAIN is a different area totally. It’s a gamechanger. In my mind, it will end up being the golden ticket of everything that we’re working on.”
In June 2026, 360 Yield Center announced a strategic restructuring that established two distinct divisional brands: 360 RAIN to focus on adaptive application, and 360 YIELD to focus on retrofit equipment upgrades.
Don’t Stop Innovating
Reflecting on the challenges of the early Precision Planting days, Sauder has five words of advice for small business owners and innovators who are just getting started.
“Gregg solves problems from the bottom up, starting with the farmer’s problems and working through the issues to resolve them at the farmer’s level. This is different from most of the industry that manufactures something they think a farmer wants or needs. Gregg starts with the farmers’ needs and ends with a solution the farmer can use to improve efficiency and/or ROI…” – Ken Ferrie, agronomist, Crop-Tech Consulting, Heyworth, Ill.
Don’t listen to the naysayers.“The first farm show I ever went to, a prominent businessman said to us, ‘It’s exciting to see what you’re doing, but you’ll never make it. You’re going to starve.’ I just smiled and told him, ‘I appreciate that,’ because he didn’t know the constitution of Gregg and Cindy. We home schooled our kids, and they were raised at farm shows. Cindy is 90% of the reason for my success. She wouldn’t give up. She knew the business and we’d work until 1 a.m. processing invoices in a motel while the kids were sleeping.
“I never listened to the outside noise. We need small businesses. If we think the Deeres, Cases, Kubotas and AGCOs have all the answers, we’re mistaken. We need small inventors of products who are willing to take a shot.”
