Ok, understood, my family came from the uppermost reaches of scotland where electricity was always over the hill, but not where they were, so am used to the patch & re-use aspect (typical crofter whereby you store everything in case it can be utilised, something Donald trump would never get, ..see his bullsh1t with regards to behaviour no golf player on a course would never be allowed back after ,,,if they didn't own the damn place)
SO what can you work with? (kiss principle).
Space? ...if so I think, geology dependent go old school & use a galvanised steel cabinet & a pit set up to act as a natural cooler & see how that went small scale, with the introduction of a portable de-humidifier & modern insulation then scale it up if it looks viable, ..by modern I mean celotex & other foilbased insulation / heat reflecting thermal based material, wood, a damp proof membrane & sand bagged piles to keep the temperature like that of a cave, ..y'know the winter squash stores of old if viable
So a scrap unit might still help you out as your inner chamber.
Of course it is experimental, but you never have to go far into the earth to achieve cool climes, take a look at your local geological survey data to get a rough idea.
On the subject of peltier units to draw moisture, as per the last post, I have had a mini unit running on test for 8 weeks before it died (£20) ..under a 3 year warranty, needless to say it went pop the other day showing a full water fault regardless, a new one is to be sent over from europe so I can take the old one apart & see where the weak link is hopefully, but this is my point, without back up units in something like this (& the original receipt kept safe) any plans could go awry, so have a back up unit ready to take the strain or run them on a meticulous timed schedule so the other circuitry involved can cool also thus extending life.
I'm sure a university would have some geo-data available if approached. It requires hard physical work beyond small scale experimentation, but you would get some scaleable base line temp & humidity data.