The municipio of González, Tamaulipas, in northern Mexico, and the South of Córdoba Province in the Argentinean Pampas are both regions strongly dependent on agriculture. To different extents, adverse climatic events (e.g., floods, droughts, and frosts) can have negative repercussions for the economy of each region, through impacts on the service and industrial sectors, as well as socially, in terms of migrations from rural to urban areas. Without conscious efforts to adapt potential increases in the frequency or in magnitude of adverse climate events or changes in climate averages (IPCC TS WG1, 2001) may make it more difficult for some producers to participate in the agricultural economy. This may be particularly true for those small- and medium-sized commercial farmers with limited capital who are not always able to recover from recurrent crop failures. In this chapter, we present two case studies of grain and cattle producers in two regions in Argentina and Mexico. The cases are distinguished by important differences in their respective socio-productive structures, and these differences point to the importance of local context and circumstance in understanding the challenge of adaptation. Yet in presenting the cases together here, we illustrate that the farmers in both locations have experienced similar processes of institutional and policy reforms that have had important implications for adaptive capacity. For this reason, we argue that any interventions intended to enhance adaptation to climate risk need to be considered in the context of the opportunities and constraints posed by the broader institutional environment and, conversely, there is a need to examine closely how institutions and policy explain differential adaptive capacities at the farm level.[...]