Land Settlement and Development Corporation

Also known as: LASEDECO — the statutory abbreviation used in the reorganization literature · The Land Settlement and Development Corporation of EO 355 · Successor of the National Land Settlement Administration — the lineage styling · The 1950 settlement corporation — the era styling · The corporation abolished by RA 1160 — the statutory bookend styling

Government

Definition

The Land Settlement and Development Corporation (LASEDECO) was the Philippine public corporation created by Executive Order No. 355 of President Elpidio Quirino, signed October 23, 1950 — officially “Creating the Land Settlement and Development Corporation and Dissolving the National Land Settlement Administration, and the Rice and Corn Production Administration and the Machinery and Equipment Department of the National Development Company” — issued pursuant to Republic Act No. 422 and signed by Executive Secretary Teodoro Evangelista. (LawPhil — EO 355) The corporation was chartered for twenty-five years with its main office in Manila and charged with the whole apparatus of state-directed land settlement: facilitating the acquisition, settlement, and cultivation of agricultural lands; giving tenants and small farmers — together with agriculture graduates, military trainees, veterans, and guerrilla members — the chance “to own farms”; encouraging migration to sparsely populated regions; subdividing public agricultural lands into farms, townsites, roads, and parks; and operating settlers’ credit agencies, utilities, irrigation works, cooperatives, and tractor and machinery pools, with a ten-year bar on the encumbrance or transfer of disposed farm lots except by inheritance. (LawPhil — EO 355)

LASEDECO was the middle link of the settlement-agency lineage this wiki’s National Land Settlement Administration entry traces: the Commonwealth’s NLSA (Commonwealth Act No. 441, June 3, 1939 — a five-member board corporation capitalized at twenty million pesos from coconut-oil excise proceeds) was dissolved into LASEDECO by EO 355’s Section 12, and LASEDECO was in turn abolished by Republic Act No. 1160 of June 18, 1954, which created the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration (NARRA) in its place. (LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 1160) The corporation thus lived fewer than four of its twenty-five charter years. Historical register: defunct.

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article; the corporation is documented within the Isulan and Wao, Lanao del Sur articles
Wikidata	N/A — no entity matching “Land Settlement and Development Corporation” (search verified)
DBpedia	N/A — no resource data (endpoint returns empty)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	resettlement (c_3836a585) — the program concept; no LASEDECO-specific concept verified
Google Scholar	Land Settlement and Development Corporation LASEDECO Executive Order 355 October 23 1950 Quirino National Land Settlement Administration Rice and Corn Production Administration National Development Company Kalawag Isulan Wao RA 1160 NARRA Board of Liquidators ACCFA Mindanao resettlement
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

LASEDECO — the statutory abbreviation used in the reorganization literature
The Land Settlement and Development Corporation of EO 355
Successor of the National Land Settlement Administration — the lineage styling
The 1950 settlement corporation — the era styling
The corporation abolished by RA 1160 — the statutory bookend styling

Examples and Analogies

A corporation built from three dissolutions: EO 355 did not found LASEDECO on fresh ground — Section 12 dissolved the NLSA, the Rice and Corn Production Administration, and the Machinery and Equipment Department of the National Development Company, and Section 13 transferred their “personnel, records, properties, equipment, assets, rights, choses in action, obligations, liabilities, and contracts” to the new corporation, with the Auditor General conducting the inventory and valuation. (LawPhil — EO 355)
A homestead corporation with machinery: where the NLSA had moved settlers onto surveyed lots, LASEDECO’s purposes ran to the full settlement infrastructure — credit agencies, utilities, irrigation, cooperatives, and tractor and machinery pools, plus the encouragement of mechanized farming — the development corporation of its name, not merely a land office. (LawPhil — EO 355)
The Kalawag template: at Isulan in what is now Sultan Kudarat, the corporation’s record shows the model at work — the LASEDECO Board opened a settlement in 1951 on land “formerly under the jurisdiction of the” NLSA as a reservation, “brought-in hundreds of farm tractors which uprooted big trees, cleared obstruction, planned, cleaned and harrowed the wide stretches of the area,” and registered the Kalawag Settlement District of roughly four hundred hectares. (Wikipedia — Isulan)
Verified statutory and project data:
Creating order: EO No. 355, October 23, 1950, President Elpidio Quirino, pursuant to RA 422; public corporation, twenty-five years, Manila main office (LawPhil — EO 355)
Board and management: a chairman and six members appointed by the President with Commission on Appointments consent, staggered terms, per diem of twenty-five pesos; a General Manager appointed by the Board with the President’s approval (LawPhil — EO 355)
Capital: the net worth of the dissolved entities plus the appraised value of ceded lands plus future appropriations; the Republic bore no liability for the corporation’s debts (LawPhil — EO 355)
Transfer rules: transferred personnel reappointed within sixty days or deemed separated; the Rice and Corn Production Administration’s agricultural activities continued only in cultivated areas, for no more than five years; surveyed lands reserved to the dissolved agencies ceded by presidential patent or deed (LawPhil — EO 355)
Kalawag (Isulan): settlement opened by the LASEDECO Board in 1951 on former NLSA reservation land; first settler group recorded as arriving September 7, 1950 — 72 World War II veterans under Venancio Magbanua — later joined by the PACSA group of former Hukbalahap surrenderees from Pampanga (Wikipedia — Isulan)
Wao (Lanao del Sur): the municipality’s record credits “the LASEDECO resettlement program of then-President Ramon Magsaysay” with making its foundation possible, its first settlers recorded as sixty families from the then-undivided Cotabato province (Wikipedia — Wao)
Abolition: RA No. 1160, approved June 18, 1954, Section 10 — LASEDECO abolished; obligations except commercial accounts to the Treasury, amortized over fifteen years; all assets to a Board of Liquidators for public auction, net proceeds to ACCFA for loans to settlers and settlers’ cooperatives (LawPhil — RA 1160)

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing the Settlement-Agency Lineage

Researchers fix the four-step chain through the statutes: Commonwealth Act No. 441 (1939) created the NLSA of Paulino Santos; EO 355 (October 23, 1950) dissolved the NLSA into LASEDECO; RA 1160 (June 18, 1954) abolished LASEDECO creating NARRA; and the 1963 Agricultural Land Reform Code abolished NARRA into the Land Authority — LASEDECO being the shortest-lived corporation of the four. (LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 1160)

2. Studying Postwar Resettlement on the Ground

The corporation’s documented projects show the program operating where the NLSA had reserved land: the Kalawag settlement at Isulan, opened in 1951 with tractors and surveyed lots for veterans and former Huk surrenderees, and the resettlement credited with founding Wao in Lanao del Sur — the continuation of the NLSA colonies under a new corporate name. (Wikipedia — Isulan, Wikipedia — Wao)

3. Analyzing Statutory Wind-Down Mechanics

RA 1160’s Sections 10, 14, and 15 supply the text of LASEDECO’s ending — Treasury amortization of obligations, a Board of Liquidators auction, net proceeds to farm credit, retirement or separation pay for personnel, and a presidential executive order to govern the liquidation, with authority to transfer needed properties directly to NARRA — a corporate dissolution executed by statute. (LawPhil — RA 1160)

4. Studying the Quirino-Era Reorganization State

EO 355 is a primary document of the postwar reorganization presidency: issued under a delegation statute (RA 422), it fused two agencies and a corporate department into one public corporation in a single order — the style of government-by-executive-order that the 1950s land program ran on. (LawPhil — EO 355)

Strategies

Dissolve forward, assume everything: EO 355’s Section 13 moved obligations and contracts, not just assets, so the settlement program’s creditors and counterparties followed the mandate to the new corporation unbroken. (LawPhil — EO 355)
Continue the predecessor’s colonies: the Kalawag record shows the corporation deliberately reopening an NLSA reservation rather than seeking new frontiers — administrative continuity as strategy, with war veterans and former Hukbalahap surrenderees settled side by side. (Wikipedia — Isulan)
Abolish with the personnel settled: RA 1160 retired the eligible under RA 660, paid the rest separation benefits and a gratuity, and routed the auction proceeds to settler credit — the wind-up template the 1954 legislators designed so abolition would not strand people or claims. (LawPhil — RA 1160)

Security and Safety Measures

Anti-insider rule at creation: EO 355 barred the corporation’s own officers and employees from acquiring land within its jurisdiction — the same guard RA 1160 would later penalize with imprisonment for NARRA’s officers. (LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 1160)
Audit and civil-service coverage: an Auditor General representative audited the corporation under commercial-audit principles, and its appointments were merit-based with Civil Service coverage except for policy-determining, confidential, and technical positions. (LawPhil — EO 355)
Tenure lock for settlers: disposed farm lots could not be encumbered or transferred for ten years except by inheritance — the tenure protection carried over from the NLSA design. (LawPhil — EO 355)
Orderly liquidation at abolition: the Board of Liquidators mechanism — auction of assets, satisfaction of commercial creditors, net proceeds to ACCFA for settler loans — protected the settlement program’s beneficiaries from the corporation’s extinction. (LawPhil — RA 1160)
For researchers: LASEDECO has no standalone reference article and no linked-data identity; claims must be cited to EO 355, RA 1160, and the locality records of its projects — the Kalawag settler dates and Wao’s founding attribution both carry tensions flagged below. (Wikipedia — Isulan, Wikipedia — Wao)

Historical Context

LASEDECO was born of the postwar settlement problem. The Commonwealth’s NLSA had planted the Koronadal Valley colonies of 1939 — the history this wiki’s Paulino Santos entry carries — but war, occupation, and reconstruction had outrun the 1939 corporation. On October 23, 1950, President Quirino, acting under Republic Act No. 422, signed EO 355: the NLSA, the Rice and Corn Production Administration, and the Machinery and Equipment Department of the National Development Company were dissolved, and their lands, staff, and obligations were assumed by a new twenty-five-year public corporation headquartered in Manila. (LawPhil — EO 355)

The corporation’s documented years ran from the fields of the former NLSA reservations: at Kalawag, on land the NLSA had held in reserve, the LASEDECO Board opened a settlement in 1951 — its first recorded settler group, seventy-two war veterans under Venancio Magbanua, dated to September 7, 1950 — later absorbing the PACSA group of former Hukbalahap surrenderees from Pampanga; at Wao in Lanao del Sur, the municipality’s own record credits the LASEDECO resettlement program with its foundation. (Wikipedia — Isulan, Wikipedia — Wao) The end came by statute: RA 1160, approved June 18, 1954, abolished the corporation after fewer than four years on the judgment that a development corporation was the wrong vehicle for the free distribution of public land, routed its obligations to the Treasury and its assets to auction, and handed the settlement mandate to NARRA under President Ramon Magsaysay — the agency this wiki’s National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration entry documents. (LawPhil — RA 1160)

Challenges and Controversies

A Twenty-Five-Year Charter Cut Short at Four

EO 355 chartered LASEDECO to 1975; RA 1160 abolished it in 1954. The reversal is read as evidence of the era’s impatience with corporate-style land agencies — the free-distribution policy wanted an administration with screening, transport, and settlement-assistance divisions, not a corporation with shareholders’ accounting — the legislative judgment this wiki’s Republic Act No. 1160 entry documents. (LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 1160)

The Kalawag Chronology

The Isulan record dates the first settler group — the seventy-two veterans — to September 7, 1950, weeks before EO 355 created the corporation that the same record credits with opening the settlement in 1951; the sources carry the sequence without resolving it, and settler dates should be cited to their records rather than reconciled by fiat. (Wikipedia — Isulan)

The Wao Attribution

Wao’s record attributes its foundation to “the LASEDECO resettlement program of then-President Ramon Magsaysay” — a phrasing strained on both ends, since Magsaysay took office in December 1953 and RA 1160 abolished LASEDECO in June 1954, while the settlement’s earliest families are recorded as arriving from undivided Cotabato. The attribution is reported as given, not endorsed. (Wikipedia — Wao)

An Agency Without an Article

LASEDECO is documented almost entirely through its bookends — EO 355 and RA 1160 — plus the founding narratives of its projects. Its managers, finances, and operations between 1950 and 1954 remain to be reconstructed from primary records; this entry reports what the verified sources carry and flags the gap rather than filling it. (LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 1160)