After a decade of publishing and editing the magazine Edible Boston, Ilene Bezahler is expanding her coverage of local food with a new publication this month. Bezahler says To Market — focusing on the entire New England region — will take a deeper dive into the current food landscape. “I want to be giving readers more information. They are ready for more. They’ve embraced local; now let’s start talking about all of the issues around local,’’ says the editor.

When asked if the magazine will have more of an investigative bent, Bezahler says, “There is going to be some negative, but we are not going to be criticizing people. I still don’t want to be reviewing.’’ She points to upcoming features about the connection between increased demand for New England oysters and an improvement in water quality, and a piece parsing what makes pork from small producers different from the commodity stuff you find at most grocery stores.

The magazine will be published on the same quarterly schedule as Edible Boston, and will also be free of charge, distributed by advertisers. Though it’s run by Edible staffers — longtime creative director Michael Piazza will oversee both publications — it is separate from the Edible Communities publications.

The focus of Edible is turning more toward home cooking, and Edible recipe editor Sarah Blackburn steps into the managing editor role there. To Market — with New England food writer (and Globe contributor) Andrea Pyenson as managing editor — aims to equip consumers with information to encourage them to buy local. Bezahler gives an example: “Why does the chicken at the farmers’ market cost $25 when you can buy, for $9.99, a rotisserie chicken at Whole Foods? . . . The slaughterhouse charges $5 per bird. If you start adding all the costs in, that’s why it’s $25. The farmers aren’t making gobs of money on the birds.’’

Bezahler didn’t start out her career championing local food. “I had no publishing experience at all when I started Edible. Not a clue. I had been in the corporate world until 2001. I took the summer off before Sept. 11, and decided after Sept. 11 that I needed to do something totally different. I ended up at Allandale Farm doing marketing and wholesale, and that’s really when I became much more knowledgeable about agriculture in New England,’’ she says.

“I also became very aware, over time, that local food producers were not earning a sustainable living. Here in the area, most of the food producers and farmers have a spouse or partner supporting them,’’ says Bezahler. “Those were issues that I really wanted to be talking about. And getting people to understand why things cost what they cost.’’

Since launching Edible in 2006, Bezahler has seen the good, bad, and ugly of local’s becoming a buzzword. “I was realizing people were using local for marketing when they weren’t actually doing local,’’ she says, referencing a Frito-Lay billboard on I-93 suggesting its potatoes came from quaint family farms.

She hopes that To Market can help reframe the conversation. “My title is editor in chief, but I’m still going to be very heavily involved in the editorial, the visual, because I feel very, very strongly that they are vehicles for where I want to take consumers.’’ For more information, go to www.tomarketmagazine.com

CATHERINE SMART

Catherine Smart can be reached at cathjsmart@gmail.com.