IOWA — If you think that “corn sweat” is an up-and-coming country band, you could be right. We haven’t verified if it is — or isn’t.

For agricultural and weather-related purposes, however, it isn’t the answer we’re seeking. Farm News held an informal survey asking a small sample audience what it surmised as the definition of corn sweat as it pertains to farming. We ask you, our dear reader, to choose the closest correct answer:

A. When a person eats too much sweet corn and sweats butter.

B. The wet, smelly part of the corn between the husk and the cob — the armpit area.

C. Iowa’s version of the Amazon Rainforest.

D. The “liquid sunshine” that comes from farmer’s hard work.

E. What a person gets from eating six cobs of spicy street corn.

If you picked “C,” you have found the best of the five creative answers sourced through our reporter’s Facebook poll. Still, that’s not exactly what corn sweat is for those who know something about agricultural and weather science.

What we know for sure is that corn sweat is what everyone seemed to be talking about after the Hanover Festival, which was held Aug. 25 in Buena Vista County. The organizers of this annual event pitched tents for shade, had an abundance of drinking water, and even had a presentation or two inside to get people out of the heat.

Despite organizers’ best efforts, there seemed to be no way for folks to get away from the corn’s evapotranspiration. That’s a whole lot of syllables.

The Oxford Dictionary defines evapotranspiration as the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration of plants.

Transpiration, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is the exhalation of water vapor through the stomata. Some people love a word that requires pulling out a dictionary twice, but three times is just a bit much. Stomata is minute pores in the leaf or the stem of a plant.

To simplify matters — corn sweats — and it does so more by the bushel. Iowa produces 2.52 billion bushels of corn annually according to a casual Google search; we’re the top corn-sweating state — when you take bushels into account — followed by Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, South Dakota, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

The corn crops’ natural evaporation processes can greatly elevate the humidity throughout the Midwest. High humidity brings higher heat indices, causing temperatures in the 90s to feel as warm as 110 degrees. Newer measurement tools crank those “feel-like” temps even higher if there’s no wind and little shade.

An acre of corn sweats off about 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water each day during the growing season, according to a U.S. Geological Survey. As a top corn-producing state, Iowa was estimated to have grown 13.1 million acres of the yellow kernel stuff in 2023; it’s estimated that we grow three times as much corn as Mexico, so it stands to reason that we can feel as warm as our friends south of the border.

As your neighbor loves to tell you, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!”

When water boils out of a corn field, the water vapor increases the moisture in the air which, in turn, increases the humidity. According to a chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it feels like 91 degrees to the human body when it’s 90 degrees outside and the relative humidity is 40%. However, it feels like 113 degrees outside when it’s 90 degrees outside and the relative humidity is 80%.

According to USA Today, Iowa’s corn crops release up to 56 billion gallons of water into the atmosphere each day, which can add 5 to 10 degrees to the dew point, which is how humidity is measured.

On Aug. 25 in Hanover, the temperature went over the 90-degree mark with humidity in the 80 percent-plus range. According to “World Weather” on the web, the “real-feel” was over 100 degrees that day, making for an exceedingly uncomfortable dog day of summer for those who attended the event and those who worked to make it happen.

The good news is that corn sweat is a sign of a healthy growing crop.

During drought, corn plants close their stomata to conserve water, releasing less water vapor as a matter of conservation. Even if this results in a smaller plant, it produces a yield rather than dying altogether.