The company, Netafim, was founded in 1965 on a kibbutz in the Negev Desert in the south of Israel, near Beersheva, and is today based in Tel Aviv. Although the company won’t share its profit records, there’s no question that Netafim has done very well as the global demand for water has grown increasingly intense. In the last 35 years, Netafim’s revenues have climbed from $60 million to more than $750 million, and its workforce has grown from a handful of kibbutzniks to more than 4,000 people on every continent but Antarctica. With a 30 percent market share, it’s the leading drip-irrigation company in the world.

Unfortunately for humanity, the natural forces fueling Netafim’s success aren’t likely to slow down anytime soon. If current population and climate trends continue, vast regions of the world will soon face “potentially devastating consequences for human life and health, business and agriculture, international relations, and the environment,” a recent report by McKinsey grimly predicted. In India, the problem is especially bad: By 2050, the country’s demand for water could exceed supply by 50 percent, according to a United Nations report.

The mass adoption of drip irrigation won’t save the world by itself. To avoid the coming catastrophe, nearly everybody will, in some way, have to “do more with less,” as the Netafim slogan goes, perhaps through embracing other novel technologies, like desalination. Otherwise, it’s going to get ugly.

Israelis know this as well as anyone. In 1965, the year Netafim was founded, a skirmish broke out between Israeli and Syrian soldiers over a spring in the Golan Heights—one of the few sources of freshwater in the region. Two years later, the fallout from the conflict helped ignite the Six-Day War, during which Israel took control of the region’s main water supply.

Palestinians are still suffering the consequences. In Gaza, just 20 miles from the kibbutz where Netafim began, Israel’s bombings last summer exacerbated what was already a desperate situation, destroying 30 percent of the territory’s water pipes, as well as 23 municipal wells and 500 septic tanks. A recent UN report warned that within the next five years the lack of fresh water will make Gaza uninhabitable. It’s precisely the type of disaster that Netafim could help prevent, but the current political reality makes doing so impossible.

In other parts of the world, the impending crisis spells opportunity for Netafim. After the U.S., India is already Netafim’s largest market, the lynchpin of its growing empire in the developing world. The company is also expanding its operations in China, Brazil, and throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

“We are working more and more with small farmers, and we are irrigating staple crops, not high value crops,” said Naty Barak, the company’s director of sustainability.