A programmer and a software engineer are two wildly different things, though many people are clueless as to the difference. It would be like saying a drafter and a mechanical or civil engineer are the same thing. Superficial similarities are not evidence of actual similarity.
No chimp off the street can "quickly learn" to be a software engineer, as it takes a huge body of obscure knowledge and practical experience that you aren't going to absorb in a matter of weeks or months. It takes years of experience to be usefully competent, and even then you have to have some natural ability. Good software engineers are worth their weight in gold, most programmers are substantially less valuable and more fungible. Truly great programmers with extreme breadth and depth of experience are also worth a mint, but for different reasons and these people are pretty rare. A lot of programmers call themselves engineers, but a short Q&A session with a competent SE can disabuse them of that notion real quick.
Most programmers simply aren't aware of how much they don't really understand. It is the difference between being a good auto mechanic and the guy who actually designed the engine from scratch. The design engineer has a perspective and level of understanding that is beyond the auto mechanic; the engineer not only understands how it works, he understands WHY it works the way it does and the considerations and limits that went into the design decisions.
Software Engineers are indeed in high demand. Also, if your company is doing as you say and having mission critical software developed by amateurs then they not only will fail as a company but deservedly so.