In this paper, I review recent developments in global political economy and political economy of development that have captured inter alia the attention of agrarian political economists. I do so through the periscope of two recent publications by Fred pearce, Great Britain's leading eco journalist and an edited volume by Tony Allann, Martin Keulertz, Suvi Sojamo and Jeroen Warner, scholars trained in different disciplines and based at various universities in the UK, the netherlands, and Finland. The account of the pace, places, and perpetrators, procedures, and problems of this particular agrarian model provides fodder for the further development of a locus classicus on what is happening to the land question in this current moment under the capitalist order, a shorthand for which is 'water and land grab'.