WHEREAS, there is an urgent need to further strengthen the security of tenure of the tenant-farmers/agricultural lessees in the cultivation of the landholding planted to rice and corn;

WHEREAS, despite various Decrees, Letters of Instructions and other Orders as well as speeches and other pronouncements by me that tenant farmers and agricultural lessees should not be ejected or dispossessed of the lands being cultivated by them, some landowners, landholders, and/or agricultural lessors have resorted to various schemes and devices with which to circumvent the aforementioned pronouncements.

WHEREAS, in view of the numerous disturbing reports that many landowners have subleased their tenanted land-holding planted to rice and corn to other persons so that the latter appears in their behalf as the legal possessor thereof without binding the landowner in the event of a violation of the aforementioned Presidential Decrees Nos. 316 and 583, the government must act with dispatch to protect the security of tenure of our tenant-farmers/agricultural lessees;

WHEREAS, this scheme is patently directed against a vital program of the New Society and cannot be tolerated, much less sanctioned, by the government;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers in me vested by the Constitution do hereby decree and order:

SECTION 1. Section 4 of P.D. No. 583 is hereby amended as follows:

"Subject to the studies on zoning of the Human Settlements Commission and unless previously authorized by the Secretary of Agrarian Reform, any landowner, landholder, agricultural-lessor or anybody acting for and in their behalf, who converts his tenanted land primarily devoted to rice and corn into any non-agricultural use or into the production of any other crop as a means to avoid the application of the land reform laws or decrees to his landholdings and to dispossess his tenant-farmers of the land tilled by them shall, upon conviction, suffer the penalty of prision mayor or a fine ranging from P5,000.00 to P10,000.00, or both, at the discretion of the Court.

"The same penalty shall be imposed on a landowner, landholder, agricultural-lessor, or anybody acting for and in their behalf, who by any other act, scheme or strategy shall eject, exclude, remove or oust and/or cause the ouster, exclusion, removal or ejectment of a tenant-farmer from his farmholdings in contravention of decrees, laws, and other orders on land reform."

SEC. 2. All provisions of existing laws, orders, decrees, rules and regulations inconsistent herewith are hereby repealed or modified accordingly.

SEC. 3. This decree shall take effect immediately.

Done in the City of Manila, this 21st day of October, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and seventy-five.