FTP and security

My company, as a matter of policy, closes the ftp ports of the servers in the DMZ. However, I am not convinced that this is necessary, given the advent of very secure ftp servers. I would appreciate any comments on the security of an open ftp port. To relate this to php, I am ready to give up trying to make my system("scp ......"); code work, because I will have to give the apache user more permissions than I am comfortable with. So, I am thinking fo using php's ftp commands instead. I see nowhere in the documentation however, if the ftp_connect can be done via the ssh transport mechanism. Or, is this unnecessary, and can I use ftp (with plain text user and password passed to ftp_login()) on port 21 without worrying about getting hacked? muchas gracias Rich